Slavery in the Circuit of Sugar, Second Edition

Martinique and the World-Economy, 1830-1848

Dale W. Tomich

• Publisher: SUNY Press
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN:
  9781438459165
  9781438459172
• eBook ISBN:
  9781438459189
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: 19th Century History
• Index: Social Sciences

A classic text long out of print, Slavery in the Circuit of Sugar traces the historical development of slave labor and plantation agriculture in Martinique during the period immediately preceding slave emancipation in 1848. Interpreting these events against the broader background of the world-economy, Dale W. Tomich analyzes the importance of topics such as British hegemony in the nineteenth century, related developments of the French economy, and competition from European beet sugar producers. He shows how slaves' adaptation—and resistance—to changing working conditions transformed the plantation labor regime and the very character of slavery itself. Based on archival sources in France and Martinique, Slavery in the Circuit of Sugar offers a vivid reconstruction of the complex and contradictory interrelations among the world market, the material processes of sugar production, and the social relations of slavery. In this second edition, Tomich includes a new introduction in which he offers an explicit discussion of the methodological and theoretical issues entailed in developing and extending the world-systems perspective and clarifies the importance of the approach for the study of particular histories.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Tables
• List of Illustrations
• Foreword
• Preface to the Second Edition
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction to the First Edition: Sugar, Slavery, and Capitalism
• Introduction to the Second Edition: The Capitalist World-Economy as a Small Island
• Chapter 1 Sugar and Slavery in an Age of Global Transformation, 1791–1848
• Chapter 2 The Contradictions of Protectionism: Colonial Policy and the French Sugar Market, 1804–1848
• Chapter 3 The Local Face of World Process
• Chapter 4 Sugar and Slavery: Forces and Relations of Production
• Chapter 5 The Habitation Sucrière: Cell Unit of Colonial Production
• Chapter 6 Obstacles to Innovation
• Chapter 7 A Calculated and Calculating System: The Dialectic of Slave Labor
• Chapter 8 The Other Face of Slave Labor: Provision Grounds and Internal Marketing
• Conclusion The Global in the Local: World-Economy, Sugar, and the Crisis of Plantation Slavery in Martinique
• Appendix 1 Estimated Volume of the Slave Trade to Martinique, 1814–1831
• Appendix 2 Slave Prices by Age and Occupation, 1825–1839
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index
• Back Cover