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Sugar and Sugarcane: Historical Resources for a Sweet Industry

Print Materials

Laurel Valley Sugar Plantation, Shotgun Quarters, 2 miles South of Thibodaux on State Route 308, Thibodaux, Lafourche Parish, LA. 1968. Historic American Engineering Record. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.

This section includes books, annual serials, and other trade periodicals. Some of the material published by the United States government is possibly digitized and available via the Internet. If not, the Federal Depository Library Program makes government publications available to researchers.

I have not included Commerce and Navigation of the United States (sometimes Foreign Commerce and Navigation of the United States) but it still may be of interest because it reports exports and import for all products. It is not included here because there are other sources for this data below, and because it is not specific to the sugar trade.

When it comes to historical statistics, many of the statistics on imports/exports, prices, and consumption that were gathered on sugar and sugar cane both for the United States and internationally that are found in trade literature, came from circulars published by merchant firms like Willett & Gray (New York and Boston), H. Clark, and J.W. de Silva & Co.. While these firms and their data/publications were well known at the time, it may be harder for modern researchers to find more than what was reported/collected by others.

Additional citations may also be found in the database Oxford Bibliographies. This includes: "Sugar in the Atlantic World" by Justin Roberts, "Cuba" by Elena A. Schneider, "Economy and Consumption in the Atlantic World" by Robert DuPlessis, "Havana in the Atlantic World" by Evelyn Jennings, etc.