EH.Net Abstracts in Economic History

            EHS Abstract Submission
                    (c) 1997 EH.Net
-----------------------------------------------------------
              Name:  Emily Mechner
               Email:  mechner at fas.harvard.edu
         Institution:  Harvard University and NBER  

         Co-author:  None
 
             Title:  Paupers and Planters: The Transition to
Sugar in Barbados, 1638-1674  
 
 Internet Address
of abstracted work:  Not available on the Internet  
 
          By mail:  
                     Emily Mechner
                     NBER
                     1050 Massachusetts Avenue, Third Floor
                     Cambridge MA 02138 
                     USA
 
          Language:  English
 
          Abstract:
   Barbados was the first (and, for decades, the only) Northern
European settlement in the Caribbean to produce a significant
amount of sugar.  Until the end of the seventeenth century, it
remained the leading producer of sugar in the region.  But until
the early 1640s, no sugar was grown there at all.  Barbados was
an island of petty planters who grew mostly cotton, tobacco, and
food crops.  Original evidence from a sample of Barbados' deed
records from 1638 to 1674 helps pinpoint the timing of its
transition to sugar and illuminate the new crop's effect on the
scale of agriculture and on the fortunes of the island's planters
during the transition.	The observed changes in the pattern of
land holdings are consistent with efforts to achieve a larger
scale of production following sugar's introduction, starting
around 1645.  Before 1645, Barbados landowners engaged in
widespread subdivision and little consolidation.  Thereafter,
consolidations exceeded subdivisions.  Changes in the size
distribution of deeds reflect the same trends.	A
disproportionately large share of the consolidators had high
occupational class.  By the early 1650s, sugar was used as a unit
of account and medium of exchange in around 80 percent of deeds
that mention the kind of payment used.	I use information about
the value of deeded property to estimate changes in the value of
agricultural land in Barbados during the period that spans the
time before and after sugar cultivation was first becoming
widespread on the island.  The evidence examined confirms some
aspects of the standard view of Barbados' transition to sugar,
but challenges others.	Land prices exhibited large fluctuations
but only gradual long-term increase.  Hedonic regression suggests
increasing returns to acres on larger tracts of land after 1645.
There was a substantial premium paid for consolidations over 20
acres in the early 1650s.  The reversal in
consolidation/subdivision trends, a shift in mediums of payment
from cotton or tobacco to sugar, and a boom in land prices
(especially for large properties) all coincide chronologically.
The transition to sugar is also visible in a boom in urban
property that occurred around the same time, and the increasing
population of deed participants who were merchants or artisans, a
sign of the island's growing commercial prosperity.

 
      Bibliography:  Mechner, Emily. "Paupers and Planters: The
Transition to Sugar in Barbados, 1638-1674."  Paper presented at
the Cliometrics Conference, University of Toronto, May 1997. 

 
                  Subject:  A
 Geographical Area:  5
      Country/Region:  Barbados
           Time Period:  5