Revisiting Sugarlandia

SUGARLANDIA REVISITED is the result of similar scholarly efforts to appraise the dynamics of the interaction between colonisers and colonised and between metropolis and local in the 19th and early 20th century sugar-based economies of Asia and the Hispanic Caribbean. The contributors analyse this relationship through the matrices of the sugar industry, its organisation, production technology, capital investment, and labour in Southeast Asia and the Caribbean. Separated by thousands of miles from each other and having different historical trajectories, the two groups of sugar economies nevertheless demonstrate similarities and common historical experience in the period of high imperialism.

The choice of regions such as Java, Puerto Rico, Cuba, and the Philippines as the subject of study is determined by the fact that they were all sugar-based economies and the commodity played a crucial role in the politics of colonialism, local resistance, and nationalism. The book is an invaluable contribution to the study of the political economies of these regions and off ers fresh perspectives on metropolis-colony interactions. It challenges the Euro/US-centric historiography that emphasises the all-pervasive capitalist system making inroads into the colonies overthrowing the local modes of economic enterprise.

European capital and sugar production in Java

Sidney W. Mintz’s foreword points out the inadequacies of what, according to him, has been the ‘New World-centred history of sugar’. He emphasises the importance of studies that bring ‘Asia into the world sugar system’, link the ‘Old World and New World sugar economies’, and re-examine the ‘mechanics of colonial imperial rule’. In a detailed introduction, the editors outline the historiographical context and illuminate the ways in which this study re-visits the history of sugar and its imperial implications. The authors, each focussing on a specific colony or a part of it, question some of the assumptions and conclusions of previous studies and approach the subject from a non-Western/metropolitan perspective. They derecognise the binary, constructed by earlier scholars, between the pre- and post-1900 political economy of sugar production and trade throughout Sugar-landia. Their studies show a degree of continuity between the two periods and they argue that if there was a rupture it must have occurred in the early 19th century. To substantiate their arguments, they redefi ne key concepts like ‘plantation’, ‘centrals’, and ‘bourgeoisie’ and thus discredit the oft-repeated dichotomies such as coloniser-colonised, metropoliscolony, and industrial-plantation.

The next five contributions discuss the socio-economic and political aspects of the sugar industry in Java, and the subsequent three chapters examine the dynamics of the sugar industry in Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines respectively. Each contribution is unique in its choice of region and issues but the comparative approach and the authors’ common concern to ‘revisit’ the late-colonial history of Sugarlandia knit the one with the other. In chapter three, Roger Knight engages in the issues of early and mid-19th century technological progression in the sugar manufacturing industry in Java and the role of the colonial (Indies) bourgeoisie in it. The author tracks the professional career of Thomas J. Edwards, an Englishman who was appointed by the Dutch authorities as administrateur of the sugar factory at Wonopringo in Pekalongan Residency on Java’s north coast. By so doing, Knight refutes the idea that industrialisation in Java represents a sudden and complete break from the past processes of sugar manufacture. Instead, he emphasises a long evolutionary process spanning several decades around the mid-19th century in which the industry was equipped with technology imported from Europe. He also questions the assumption that the diff usion of technical skills was entirely from the metropolitan and contends that the skilled Chinese and Javanese workers played a crucial role in sustaining the industrialisation process.

In chapter four, Arthur van Schaik and Roger Knight delve into the dynamics of the colonial European/Dutch community in Java, which was rather stratifi ed (Caucasian, Creole, and mestizo) and perpetually in fl ux. This was more so since the introduction of the ‘cultivation system’ (cultuurstelsel) in the 1830s which brought a large number of fresh Europeans to the region. They argue that this created apprehension and anxiety in the community, especially among the elites, but these tensions soon dissipated as the newcomers integrated with the community via matrimonial connections. The male-female disproportion and marriages across communities rendered the racial or ethnic identities fuzzy. Those in lower echelons, however, suff ered more because of the limited job opportunities in the highly mechanised sugar manufactories. In tune with other contributors, Ulbe Bosma (chapter five) questions the assumptions that after the 1884 crisis in the world sugar market the metropolitan capital appropriated the sugar industry in Java and that the careless lifestyle of the ‘orientalised landed gentry’ was supplanted by ‘white efficiency’. He argues that the impact of the crisis and the role of ‘white European and overseas capital’ have been overstated and shows that several families of the Indies bourgeoisie in Yogyakarta remained in control of their factories and that the locally accumulated capital was quite instrumental in sustaining the industry in the subsequent decades.

In chapter six, Sri Margana maps the changing agrarian relationships in Java as a consequence of the large-scale colonial plantation system in the 19th century. The author approaches this relationship through peasant resistance that occurred in various forms. Such occurrences were the results of the government regulations that aff ected the role and positions of rural peasant elites, and the diff erences in the perception of relationship between the colonial authorities (land leaseholders) and peasants. Joost Coté examines (in chapter seven) the late 19th and early 20th century discourse on metropolitan capitalist ambitions that was at variance with the local political and economic aspirations. Sugar was central to this discourse because the rapid expansion of colonial capital in the industry seemingly precipitated the crisis of relationship among the diff erentiated colonial bourgeoisie on the one hand and between them and the indigenous society on the other. He underscores the racial, ethnic, and class dichotomies that characterised the colonial society in the East Indies and the contestations within the colonial modernity. He argues that the discourse failed to infl uence the policy makers and the colonial critique soon dissipated as imperialism entered a diff erent phase in the early 20th century.

Slaves, US capital and the sugar industry

The revisionist endeavour in the study of Sugarlandia’s Atlantic and Pacifi c segments (the Caribbean and Philippines respectively) has yielded interpretations that remarkably correspond with those of the East Indies. In chapter eight, Manel Barcia examines the role of slaves in the sugar industry of Cuba in the 19th century. He shows that despite prohibitions the slave trade between Cuba and Africa continued on a massive scale during the middle decades of the century and that most sugar mills hosted a large number of slaves until slavery was abolished in the 1880s. The study demonstrates fairly explicitly that the incompatibility of machine-based production and slave labour is a myth. Cuba emerged as the largest producer-exporter of cane sugar with the most advanced sugar manufacturing technology in the world at a time when slavery was the dominant form of labour. The author dismisses the assumption that technological advancement is contingent on wage workers. In many parts of Sugarlandia, slaves and semi-servile labourers comprised the industrial workforce. He also underscores the dominant position of the Havana bourgeoisie in the sugar industry even after 1898 when Cuba was colonised by the US. The role of the bourgeoisie in Cuba’s resistance against US colonial occupation is discussed in the next article by Jorge Ibarra (chapter nine) and compared with their counterparts in Puerto Rico. The author argues that in their perception of nationalism the Spanish immigrant elites of Cuba were in sharp contrast withthose of Puerto Rico. Several factors, including their numerical strength, religious affi liation, acculturation, and the economic opportunities contributed to the distinct identities they came to form in the two US colonies. At both the places, they dominated the sugar industry in the early decades of the 20th century. The author argues that the US colonial capital did not pervade the sugar industry and reinforces the revisionist view of a fundamental continuity in the colonial bourgeoisie’s control over the sugar industry between the pre and post 1898 periods. That the US occupation of the Philippines and Puerto Rico, formerly Spanish colonies, in 1898 was not a cataclysmic event or a radical rupture is also underscored by Juan Giusti-Cordero in the final chapter. Based on his analysis of Philippino and Puerto Rican sugar planters, the author argues that significant capitalistic development had taken place and they were already connected with world market much before 1898. Like the bourgeoisie in Cuba and Java, ethnically and culturally diverse and complex sugar planters of the Philippines and Puerto Rico retained their dominant position in the industry and inhibited US capital from permeating this domain.

Editing a book that contains research papers from scholars so diverse in expertise, area of interest and intellectual orientation is not such an easy task. The editors of this volume have done a great job by outlining the major issues and interpretations the contributors address in their papers. The authors revisit the history of Sugarlandia and approach it with an intellectual package that is informed by their own experiences and worldviews. The studies offer a new perspective on the metropolitan-colony interactions in diff erent parts of Asia and the Americas in the 19th and 20th centuries. This revisionist perspective aside, the focus of the papers, with the exception of Sri Margana’s and Juan Giusti-Cordero’s, is nevertheless on the colonial European bourgeoisie. The authors raise many issues requiring further investigation. Indeed, the readers’ thirst remains unquenched because the narrative of local indigenous agency is limited to some occasional references. A fuller appreciation of the native involvement in the industry awaits scholarly attention.

The book is a valuable addition to the literature on the colonial history of this period and introduces the reader to a variety of archival sources. A map showing Sugarlandia and a glossary of non-English terms would have made the book more readerfriendly. There are some typos and grammatical inconsistencies in the texts and tables. The total in table 4.1 on page 62 should be 102 instead of 107 and in table 4.2 on page 66 it should be 30 instead of 32. These are minor errors and omissions and do not at all affect the value of the book. 

Ghulam A. Nadri
Georgia State University
gnadri@gsu.edu