| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 92.2

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 92.2 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Tropical Babylons: Sugar and the Making of the Atlantic World, 1450–1680. Ed. by Stuart B. Schwartz. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004. xvi, 347 pp. Cloth, $59.95, ISBN 0-8078-2875-0. Paper, $22.50, ISBN 0-8078-5538-3.)
Tropical Babylons is an exciting book in which Stuart B. Schwartz commences with a discussion of Eric Williams's Capitalism and Slavery (1944), demonstrating the book's contribution to the historiography of sugar, capitalism, and slavery. Schwartz also supports Karl Marx's portrayal of slavery as an institution that exploited Africans for their labor and initiated the "dawn of capitalist production" (p. 1). He stresses, however, that other factors must be considered apart from sugar in order to comprehend "the simultaneous growth of capitalism" (ibid.).	1
The study contends that profitable sugar production was linked to extensive landholding and "a regimented labor force" (p. 1). It gave rise to a plantation system that involved slavery, the adoption of capitalist modes of production, and the importation of a white managerial class unconcerned with the humanity of workers. In Schwartz's opinion, sugar is a dangerous substance. It causes "hyperactivity in children, dental decay and numerous other health problems and social ills" (p. 2). Furthermore, the plantation system led to the slaughter of the Africans and gave rise to racism.	. . .

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