Race and Labour in the Cane Fields: Documenting Louisiana Sugar, 1844 - 1917
Description
This project seeks to investigate the fortunes of the American sugar industry between 1844 and 1917. Utilizing a unique data set on the performance of Louisiana's sugar plantations, plus other supporting materials, the project provides both micro-level and regional analyses of the American sugar economy paying particular attention to shifting patterns of labour. Our approach centres on four historical problems: the peculiarity of the sugar sector within the slave South; the transition from slavery to freedom; the persistence of the "Old" and the novelty of the "New South"; and the rise and fall of American sugar during U.S. imperial expansion.
At the heart of this project lies an unusually rich resource that analyses individual plantation production, ownership, and technological innovation across time and space. Historians have long known about, but never have systematically used the annual statements of the sugar crop compiled by Pierre Champomier(1844-1861) and Alcee Bouchereau (1868-1917). These materials are singular in both their detail and their coverage of individual plantations rather than simply parish-wide aggregate figures; while Champomier's reports provide a unique glimpse into the agricultural dynamics of the slave era, Bouchereau's later compilations add even further details on technological investment and innovation, crop diversification, ownership patterns, and geographic mobility. These sustained time series have no parallel in the history of sugar or, indeed, in southern agricultural history. Utilizing this detailed data set on the performance of Louisiana's sugar plantations, plus records from the U.S. census, we developed a relational database that addresses plantation production, ownership, and technological innovation across time and space. The database (with its intuitive web based front end) involves innovative use of large quantities of data that are unique in the study of slavery, technical transition, and the rural sector.
Objectives
- To complete the collation and entry of crop, ownership, and workforce data from multiple sources.
- To deliver via the web, a publicly available, flexibly arrayed, database that, following the publication of our findings, will allow future researchers to select subsets and run their own specific queries
- To prepare for publication several co-authored articles and present conference papers in UK/USA/Europe during the project