Doctoral Dissertation Research: An Empire of Purity: Making the Modern Sugar Economy

该奖项支持研究糖概念变化的博士论文，这些变化源于19世纪末首次实施的糖生产新模式。1875年至1925年间，为了应对巨大的竞争压力，加勒比地区和整个甘蔗种植业的糖生产性质发生了根本性的变化。新的自由和强制劳动来源和制度取代了奴隶制，小型动物动力种植园让位给技术先进的大型工厂。工业化和中央集权所带来的政治、社会、经济和环境的巨大变化已被广泛研究。然而，其中最显著的变化或许也是最微妙的，那就是糖本身的概念以及糖是纯净的含义的转变。直到19世纪末，“糖”都是指一种天然物质，这种物质的价值只能通过有经验的人运用他们所有的感官和判断的知识和技能来衡量。但在19世纪最后几十年和20世纪头几十年，这种对糖质量的评价在商业和生产中被一种新的价值概念所取代，即用化学方法测定糖的含量。本文探讨了糖和纯度的含义和性质的变化对全球糖生产、劳动和贸易的影响；以及糖业经济本身是如何塑造这些新的价值观念的。该项目侧重于两种特殊的经济和知识关系：首先是美国与古巴之间的关系，古巴是美国消费的一半糖的来源；第二次是古巴和格拉斯哥之间，为古巴和世界各地的现代糖厂提供了重型设备和专业知识。通过分析古巴、英国和美国档案中出版的书籍和期刊、工厂生产记录、信件，特别是法律和贸易争端，本项目将展示这种从感官知识到科学知识的转变如何重塑了糖业贸易、生产和工作组织的性质。该项目将重新思考商品和历史上的商品化过程。与棉花、小麦和其他经过充分研究的例子的机械商品化不同，糖通过科学的标准化力量成为一种全球可交易的商品。这项研究将阐明天然产品如何成为全球可交换的商品，以及这一过程如何影响交换所触及的人和地方。它将利用科学史，特别是科学与帝国的历史，来了解全球贸易的历史；相反，它将利用商品和贸易的历史来帮助理解科学是如何在遥远的地方受到竞争和稳定的。潜在的更广泛的影响本论文项目将感兴趣的商业，经济和贸易的学者以及科学历史学家。除了出版一本基于论文的学术书籍和文章，并在专业学术会议上发表演讲外，联合pi还打算出版两篇针对非专业读者的文章。这些文章将使用糖的例子来强调所有现代商品交易所面临的挑战，例如，当分散的生产者、贸易商和消费者的信任依赖于在地球另一端进行的科学测量时，确定何时应该信任他们买卖的东西。

IntroductionThis award supports doctoral dissertation research on changes in the notion of sugar that resulted from new modes of sugar production that were first implemented in the late 19th century. Between 1875 and 1925, in response to massive competitive pressure, the nature of sugar production in the Caribbean and throughout the cane-growing world was radically transformed. New sources and systems of free and coerced labor took the place of slavery, and small animal-powered plantations gave way to huge, technically sophisticated factories. The dramatic political, social, economic, and environmental changes brought by industrialization and centralization have been extensively studied. Yet the most remarkable change of all was perhaps the most subtle, a transformation of the very idea of sugar itself and what it meant for sugar to be pure. Until the end of the nineteenth century, "sugar" denoted a natural substance, something that could only be valued through the knowledge and skill of experienced individuals using all their senses and their judgment. But during the last decades of the 19th century and first decades of the 20th, this kind of evaluation of sugar's quality was superseded in commerce and production by a new concept of value, the chemical determination of its sucrose content. This dissertation explores the effect of this change in the meaning and nature of sugar and purity on the global production, labor, and trade in sugar; and how the sugar economy itself shaped those new ideas of value. Intellectual MeritThe project focuses on two particular economic and intellectual relationships: first between the United States and Cuba, the source of half of US-consumed sugar; and second between Cuba and Glasgow, which provided the heavy equipment and expertise for modern sugar factories in Cuba and around the world. By analyzing published books and journals, factory production records, correspondences, and especially legal and trade disputes, in Cuban, British, and American archives, this project will demonstrate how this shift from sensory to scientific knowledge reshaped the nature of trade, production, and the organization of work in the world of sugar. The project will reconsider commodities and processes of commodification in history. Unlike the mechanical commodification of cotton, wheat, and other well-studied examples, sugar became a globally tradable item through the standardizing power of science. This research will clarify how natural products become globally exchangeable goods, and how that process affects the people and places touched by exchanges. It will use the history of science, especially science and empire, to understand the history of global trade; conversely, it will use the history of commodities and trade to help understand how science is contested and stabilized across vast distances.Potential Broader impactsThis dissertation project will be of interest to scholars of business, economics, and trade as well as to historians of science. In addition to publishing a scholarly book and articles based on the dissertation and delivering presentations at professional scholarly meetings, the Co-PI intends to publish two articles aimed at nonspecialist audiences. These articles would use the sugar example to emphasize challenges facing all modern commodity exchanges, such as determining when dispersed producers, traders, and consumers should trust what they are buying and selling when such trusts depend on scientific measurements made on the far side of the planet.