Commodity Frontiers, Spatial Economy, and Technological Innovation in the Caribbean Sugar Industry, 1783–1878

Abstract

Debate over the relationship between slavery and technology has a long history. Broadly speaking, two approaches to the question have been advanced. One school of thought has regarded slavery as an archaic, pre-capitalist system of production relations, and has emphasised the incapacity of slaves to utilise sophisticated technologies and the backwardness of planters. From this perspective, either slave relations suppress technological innovation, or technological advance spells the end of slavery. The other school, by contrast, has regarded slavery as modern, and has emphasised the productivity, profitability, and technological efficiency of slave economies. Despite this opposition, both approaches share a common view: technology, particularly steam power, is presumed to have a transformative effect on economies and societies. The debate turns on whether or not technology is adopted. No matter what the position, it is treated as a variable independent of the social relations of slavery and is regarded as virtually a free-floating signifier of modernity.

This chapter builds upon a previous approach to the crisis and reconstitution of the nineteenth century Caribbean sugar economy that appears in ‘Commodity frontiers, conjuncture and crisis: the remaking of the Caribbean sugar industry, 1783–1866’, in Laviña, Javier and Zeuske, Michael (eds): Second slaveries and the Atlantization of the Americas, Münster: LIT Verlag, 2013. The author thanks Ina Brownridge and the staff of The Binghamton University Multimedia Information Technology Services for preparing the images.