Sugar and the Economic Integration of the Early Modern Atlantic World

FAIN: FB-53313-07

John James McCusker
Trinity University (San Antonio, TX 78212-7201)

Globalization started with the expansion of Europe, in the middle of the fifteenth century. A key part of globalization is the integration of the world economy. Historians tracing economic integration could use better data and an explanation of just how integration occurred. My study, now in its final stages, offers both for what was arguably the most consequential commodity traded in the early modern Atlantic world — sugar. My book extends back into the sixteenth century a wide range of carefully constructed series for both producer and consumer prices for sugar, things new in themselves, and then presents an analysis of the start and spread of the very agent of economic integration, the business newspapers that published those prices.

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