Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-8kt4b Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-06-22T19:01:16.213Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Chapter 5 - Sugar

from Part I - Commodities

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 January 2023

By
Richard Rosa
Edited by
Fernando Degiovanni  and
Javier Uriarte
Fernando Degiovanni
Affiliation:
City University of New York
Javier Uriarte
Affiliation:
Stony Brook University, State University of New York
Get access

Summary

This chapter focuses on sugar as a commodity underlining and overdetermining social, political, and aesthetic changes in the Caribbean from the 1870s to the 1930s. These global and regional changes included the consolidation of the gold-standard regime and its sudden dismissal, the apparition of corporate-based capitalism, the rearticulation of economics as a discipline through the marginalist “revolution,” the incorporation of former slaves and indentured service into a wage-labor force, and the beginning of the conversion of former plantations into hospitality sites. The resurgence of sugar as a dominant raw commodity gave a particular character to the region's absorption into global corporate capitalism. By focusing on both the material and the social dimension of sugar, the argument is made that this commodity helped negotiate the differences between literary and artistic innovations coming from European-influenced lettered elites and those coming from popular groups with strong Afro-Caribbean roots.

Keywords

sugarplantationscapitalismcolonialismfinancecorporationsCaribbeanm+K14aterial cultureracism
Type
Chapter
Information
Latin American Literature in Transition 1870–1930 , pp. 74 - 88
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

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

Works Cited

Allewaert, Monique. Ariel’s Ecology: Plantations, Personhood, and Colonialism in the American Tropics. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2013.Google Scholar
Ayala, César J. American Sugar Kingdom. The Plantation Economy of the Spanish Caribbean, 1898–1934. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999.Google Scholar
Benítez Rojo, Antonio. “Power/Sugar/Literature: Toward a Reinterpretation of Cubanness.” Cuban Studies 16 (1986): 9–31.Google Scholar
Benítez Rojo, Antonio La Isla que se repite. 1989. Edición definitiva. Barcelona: Casiopea, 1998.Google Scholar
Benítez-Rojo, Antonio. The Repeating Island: The Caribbean and the Postmodern. Trans. James Maraniss. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1996.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Capetillo, Luisa. Amor y anarquía. Los escritos de Luisa Capetillo. Ed. Ramos, Julio. San Juan: Ediciones Huracán, 1992.Google Scholar
Carpentier, Alejo. Ecue-Yamba-O. 1933. Barcelona: Seix Barral, 1986.Google Scholar
Curtin, Philip D. The Rise and Fall of the Plantation Complex: Essays in Atlantic History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hudson, Peter James. Bankers and Empire: How Wall Street Colonized the Caribbean. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Konings, Martin. The Development of American Finance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Manjapra, Kris. “Plantation Dispossessions: The Global Travel of Agricultural Capitalism.” American Capitalism. New Histories. Ed. Beckert, Sven and Desan, Christine. New York: Columbia University Press, 2018. 361–387.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mirzoeff, Nicholas. The Right to Look: A Counterhistory of Visuality. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2011.Google Scholar
Moore, Jason W. “Madeira, Sugar, and the Conquest of Nature in the ‘First’ Sixteenth Century: Part i: From ‘Island of Timber’ to Sugar Revolution, 1420–1506.” Review (Fernand Braudel Center) 32.4 (2009): 345–390.Google Scholar
Ortiz, Fernando. Contrapunteo cubano del tabaco y el azúcar. Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1978.Google Scholar
Ortiz, Fernando Cuban Counterpoint: Tobacco and Sugar. Trans. Harriet de Onís. Introduction Bronislaw Malinowski. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1995.Google Scholar
Ortiz, Fernando Los negros brujos. Miami: Universal, 1973.Google Scholar
Ramos, Julio. “Introducción.” Amor y Anarquía. Los escritos de Luisa Capetillo. By Capetillo, Luisa. Ed. Ramos, Julio. Río Piedras: Ediciones Huracán, 1992. 11–64.Google Scholar
Tucker, Richard P. Insatiable Appetite: The United States and the Ecological Degradation of the Tropical World. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wells, Jeremy. Romances of the White Man’s Burden: Race, Empire, and the Plantation in American Literature, 1880–1936. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 2011.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zeno Gandía, Manuel. Garduña. 1896. Barcelona: Edil, 1986.Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

  • Sugar
  • Edited by Fernando Degiovanni, City University of New York, Javier Uriarte, Stony Brook University, State University of New York
  • Book: Latin American Literature in Transition 1870–1930
  • Online publication: 14 January 2023
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108976367.006
Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

  • Sugar
  • Edited by Fernando Degiovanni, City University of New York, Javier Uriarte, Stony Brook University, State University of New York
  • Book: Latin American Literature in Transition 1870–1930
  • Online publication: 14 January 2023
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108976367.006
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Sugar
  • Edited by Fernando Degiovanni, City University of New York, Javier Uriarte, Stony Brook University, State University of New York
  • Book: Latin American Literature in Transition 1870–1930
  • Online publication: 14 January 2023
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108976367.006
Available formats
×