Race and Labour in the Cane Fields: Documenting Louisiana Sugar, 1844 - 1917
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Grant Holder:
Dr Richard Follett
This project seeks to investigate the fortunes of the American sugar industry between 1844 and 1917. Utilizing a unique data set on the performance of Louisiana’s sugar plantations, plus other supporting materials, the project provides both micro-level and regional analyses of the American sugar economy paying particular attention to shifting patterns of labour. Our approach centres on four historical problems: the peculiarity of the sugar sector within the slave South; the transition from slavery to freedom; the persistence of the “Old” and the novelty of the “New South”; and the rise and fall of American sugar during U.S. imperial expansion.
At the heart of this project lies an unusually rich resource that analyses individual plantation production, ownership, and technological innovation across time and space. Historians have long known about, but never have systematically used the annual statements of the sugar crop compiled by Pierre Champomier(1844-1861) and Alcee Bouchereau (1868-1917). These materials are singular in both their detail and their coverage of individual plantations rather than simply parish-wide aggregate figures; while Champomier’s reports provide a unique glimpse into the agricultural dynamics of the slave era, Bouchereau’s later compilations add even further details on technological investment and innovation, crop diversification, ownership patterns, and geographic mobility. These sustained time series have no parallel in the history of sugar or, indeed, in southern agricultural history. Utilizing this detailed data set on the performance of Louisiana's sugar plantations, plus records from the U.S. census, we developed a relational database that addresses plantation production, ownership, and technological innovation across time and space. The database (with its intuitive web based front end) involves innovative use of large quantities of data that are unique in the study of slavery, technical transition, and the rural sector.
OBJECTIVES:·To complete the collation and entry of crop, ownership, and workforce data from multiple sources.· To deliver via the web, a publicly available, flexibly arrayed, database that, following the publication of our findings, will allow future researchers to select subsets and run their own specific queries· To prepare for publication several co-authored articles and present conference papers in UK/USA/Europe during the project.
| Project start date: 2003-10 | Project end date: 2007-10 |
Subject domains:
Era(s):
Country/region(s):
| Methods used | Category |
|---|---|
| Disk publishing | Data publishing and dissemination |
| Collating | Data analysis |
| Data mining | Data analysis |
| Data modelling | Data structuring and enhancement |
| Human factors analysis | Strategy and project management |
| Iterative design | Strategy and project management |
| Risk management | Strategy and project management |
| Interface design | Data publishing and dissemination |
Funding sources:
Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), Social Science and Humanities Research Council, Canada
Content types created:
Dataset/structured data
Software tools used:
Microsoft Access
Source material used:
At the heart of this project lies an unusually rich resource that analyses individual plantation production, ownership, and technological innovation across time and space. The annual statements of the Louisiana sugar crop compiled by Pierre Champomier (1844-1861) and Alcee Bouchereau (1868-1917)are singular in both their detail and their coverage of individual plantations rather than simply parish-wide aggregate figures; while Champomier’s reports provide a unique glimpse into the agricultural dynamics of the slave era, Bouchereau’s later compilations add even further details on machine investment, crop diversification, ownership patterns, and geographic mobility. These sustained time series address plantation ownership, production, technological investment, and industry-wide performance.
The second primary source is the U.S. decennial agricultural census recording name, cash value of the farm, the value of farm implements owned, agricultural and manufacturing output, real and personal property valuations, technological investment, land use, the volume of sugar and other commodities produced. When linked to the above harvest records, we can track planter persistence and the dynamics of the plantation household. This detailed source of information significantly enhances and adds further sophistication to the established data collected by Champomier and Bouchereau.
Digital resource created:
Completion of a relational database that enables users to address the plantation regime of Louisiana, examine demographic change, property ownership, technical investment, labour-force allocation, and economic performance. Building upon a successful pilot project that used a small fraction of the available "harvest" (Champomier & Bouchereau) data, Follett and Halpern confirmed the feasibility of the larger project with specially designed software (“POV”) to search and query the data, produce time-series, and answer the important research questions outlined in the main application. Having collated the "harvest" data for the entire length of the project, we then added to this, records drawn from the decennial U.S. manuscript census on labour, estate capitalization, and farm size, and finally include relevant quantitative data from our research on archival documents. As work advanced, however, and the intensely time-consuming nature of US census data entry revealed, we decided to produce two databases that is entered via a single portal--the first utilizes harvest and census data for five key sugar producing parishes; the second database addresses harvest data alone for all parishes over the length of the period studied.
Access to digital resource:
Open Access
Data Formats created:
Microsoft Access Database (MDB)
Publications:
Richard Follett & Rick Halpern, “From Slavery to Freedom in Louisiana’s Sugar Country: Changing Labour Systems and Workers’ Power” in Bernard Moitt, ed., Sugar, Slavery, and Society (Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 2004), 135-156.
Richard Follett, “‘Give to the Labor of America, the Market of America’: Marketing the Old South’s Sugar Crop, 1800-1860,” Revista de Indias LXV, 233 (January-April 2005), 117-147.
Richard Follett, "Slavery and Technology in Louisiana's Sugar Bowl” in in Susanna Delfino and Michele Gillespie, eds., Southern Industrialization in Perspective (forthcoming, Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2006).
Further articles are to be delivered as project outputs along with, obviously, the databases (access)
Richard Follett, “‘Give to the Labor of America, the Market of America’: Marketing the Old South’s Sugar Crop, 1800-1860,” Revista de Indias LXV, 233 (January-April 2005), 117-147.
Richard Follett, "Slavery and Technology in Louisiana's Sugar Bowl” in in Susanna Delfino and Michele Gillespie, eds., Southern Industrialization in Perspective (forthcoming, Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2006).
Further articles are to be delivered as project outputs along with, obviously, the databases (access)
Institutions affiliated with this project:
| UK HE institutions involved: |
|---|
| University of Sussex |
| UK HE institutions involved: |
|---|
| University of Toronto |
| Canada |
Project staff and expertise:
| Principal staff member: | Dr Richard Follett; Professor Rick Halpern |
|---|---|
| Other staff: | Postdoctoral researcher(s) / Research assistant(s) |
| External expertise: |
| Metadata on this arts-humanities.net record | |
|---|---|
| Author(s) of record | Richard Follett |
| Title | Race and Labour in the Cane Fields: Documenting Louisiana Sugar, 1844 - 1917 |
| Record created | 2006-08-11 |
| Record updated | 2010-06-11 11:17 |
| URL of record | http://www.arts-humanities.net/node/2212 |
| Citation of record | Richard Follett: Race and Labour in the Cane Fields: Documenting Louisiana Sugar, 1844 - 1917. <http://www.arts-humanities.net/node/2212> created: 2006-08-11, last updated 2010-06-11 11:17 |