From a Colonial to a National Regime, 1500–1945

Abstract

To begin our historical journey through the previous incarnations of the sugar regime this chapter traces the evolution of the commercial trade in sugar from its beginnings in the Atlantic in the 16^th century through to its circumnavigation of the globe in the 20^th century. It is marked in the main by the rise and fall of the colonial regime, the legacies of which were then inscribed into the putative national regime that began to take shape from the mid-19^th century onward. Key in these transitions was the trade regulation of the dominant trading powers, which played a critical, though not always successful, role in assisting the process of aggrandisement and assuaging the contradictions that accompanied it. Tracing this changing policy thus provides both an explanatory variable for the nature of power and purpose in the sugar regime and a monitor on its spatial ascent.