Hostname: page-component-7bb8b95d7b-w7rtg Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-09-12T03:52:41.526Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Small Islands and Huge Comparisons: Caribbean Plantations, Historical Unevenness, and Capitalist Modernity

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 January 2016

Dale Tomich
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Charles Tilly (1984) has advocated the study of “big structures, large processes and huge comparisons” as the surest path to knowledge in the present conjuncture. This essay follows his lead with a comparative study of the transformation of the sugar industry in Martinique and Cuba during the nineteenth century. Slavery in the Americas is commonly viewed as an archaic form of social and economic organization that is incompatible with modern forms of economy and polity emerging in the nineteenth century. Such a perspective presumes the singularity of slavery and represents its abolition throughout the hemisphere as a linear transition to capitalist modernity.

Type
Articles
Information
Social Science History , Volume 18 , Issue 3 , Fall 1994 , pp. 339 - 358
Copyright
Copyright © Social Science History Association 1994 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Abbott, A. (1992) “From causes to events: Notes on narrative positivism.” Sociological Methods and Research 22: 428–55.Google Scholar
Aminzade, R. (1992) “Historical sociology and time.” Sociological Methods and Research 22: 456–580.Google Scholar
Friedlaender, H. (1978) Historia economica de Cuba. Havana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales.Google Scholar
Griffin, L. J. (1992) “Temporality, events, and explanation in historical sociology: An introduction.” Sociological Methods and Research 22: 403–27.Google Scholar
Guerra y Sánchez, R. (1964) Sugar and Society in the Caribbean: An Economic History of Cuban Agriculture. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Hopkins, T. K. (1982) “The study of the capitalist world-economy: Some introductory considerations,” in Hopkins, T. K., Wallerstein, I., and associates (eds.) World-Systems Analysis: Theory and Methodology. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage: 9–38.Google Scholar
Knight, F. W. (1970) Slave Society in Cuba during the Nineteenth Century. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.Google Scholar
Koselleck, R. (1985) Futures Past: On the Semantics of Historical Time. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
McMichael, P. (1990) “Incorporating comparison within a world-historical perspective: An alternative comparative method.” American Sociological Review 55: 385–97.Google Scholar
Marrero, L. (1983–86) Cuba: Economía y sociedad: Azúcar, ilustración, y conciencia, 1763–1868. 5 vols. Madrid: Editorial Playor S.A.Google Scholar
Moreno Fraginals, M. (1978) El ingenio: Complejo económico cubano del azúcar. 3 vols. Havana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales.Google Scholar
Quadagno, J., and Knapp, S. J. (1992) “Have historical sociologists forsaken theory? Thoughts on the history/theory relationship.” Sociological Methods and Research 22: 481–507.Google Scholar
Sartre, J. P. (1982) Critique of Dialectical Reason. London: Verso.Google Scholar
Scott, R. J. (1985) Slave Emancipation in Cuba: The Transition to Free Labor, 1860–1899. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Taylor, P. J. (1987) “The poverty of international comparisons: Some methodological lessons from world-systems analysis.” Studies in Comparative International Development (spring): 12–39.Google Scholar
Tilly, C. (1984) Big Structures, Large Processes, Huge Comparisons. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.Google Scholar
Tomich, D. (1990) Slavery in the Circuit of Sugar: Martinique in the World Economy. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.Google Scholar
Wolf, E. (1982) Europe and the People without History. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Zanetti Lacuona, O., and Alvarez, A. Garcia (1987) Caminos para el azúcar. Havana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales.Google Scholar