| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 111.4

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 111.4 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Canada and the United States

Richard Follett. The Sugar Masters: Planters and Slaves in Louisiana's Cane World, 1820–1860. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press. 2005. Pp. viii, 290. $54.95.
Richard Follett's book paints a grim portrait of Louisiana's cane country in the decades before the Civil War. Citing evidence from a wide array of planters' papers, antebellum periodicals, and Works Progress Administration (WPA) interviews with former slaves, Follett argues that the region's planters practiced an especially oppressive form of agro-industrial capitalism. The book confirms former slave Ceceil George's recollection that she had grown up in "hard times" (p. 46).	1
The North American outpost of a global economy, southern Louisiana's sugar plantation complex rose from the scattered ashes of St. Domingue in the 1790s to become one of the world's leading producers by the middle of the nineteenth century. This remarkable growth depended on increasing demand for sugar and a favorable tariff that offered Louisiana's producers some protection from foreign competition. Sugar planters took advantage of the opportunity presented by their privileged position in the national market. After the United States prohibited the importation of Africans, Louisiana's sugar planters successfully tapped the interstate slave trade to replenish and increase the enslaved population, which suffered mightily under the harsh conditions of sugar plantation labor. The sugar planters augmented this human power by pouring capital into technological innovation, installing steam-driven mills to press cane and vacuum evaporators to transform its juice into sugar. By the eve of the Civil War, Follett observes, the most heavily capitalized and technologically advanced agricultural sector in the United States could be found in southern Louisiana.	. . .

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