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The Sweetest Scholarship: Trinity Distinguished Professor Awarded NEH Fellowship to Study History of the Sugar Trade
by Russell Guerrero ’83

You might call it a sweet deal. The Division of Research Programs of the National Endowment for the Humanities has awarded a fellowship for 2007-2008 to John J. McCusker, the Ewing Halsell Distinguished Professor of American History and Professor of Economics at Trinity University. The fellowship supports his research on “Sugar and the Economic Integration of the Early Modern Atlantic World.”

For his latest research project, McCusker is looking into the origins of globalization and how a new and more efficient source of information – business newspapers– helped integrate national economies linked by the sugar trade.

The newspapers published little more than the buying and selling prices of commodities, interest rates, exchange rates, and related kinds of information. Most were published once-a-week. But from these newspapers, sugar producers were able to find the best markets to sell their crop as well as which types of sugar – brown or white – brought in the most money. And when the newspapers showed the market was down, sugar producers could convert their crop into another profitable commodity: rum.

McCusker has discovered business newspapers dating back to the 16^th century which he has used to track the growth and development of the sugar industry. What has made the research project challenging is the lack of a complete archive of business newspapers. “There is nothing so uninteresting as yesterday’s stock tables or exchange rates,” said McCusker, commenting why business newspapers were seldom collected and saved.

In fact, except for McCusker’s work, business newspapers from past centuries have largely been forgotten and rarely, if ever, used for academic research. The search for copies of business newspapers has sent McCusker to archives in several cities including Antwerp, Amsterdam, and London.

The main area of McCusker’s historical studies has been the economy of the Atlantic world during the 17^th and 18^th centuries. In particular, McCusker has studied the development of the modern sugar industry, which he considers the most consequential commodity traded between Europe and the New World. “It’s an immensely important basis for much of the Western Hemisphere and its economy,” said McCusker.

“It’s been said, and I agree, that without sugar there would have not been slavery in the Western Hemisphere,” said McCusker, who added that the slave trade arose from sugar producers looking for a source of cheap labor.

Books published:

History of World Trade since 1450, 2 vols. (2005) Editor-in-chief.
The Early Modern Atlantic Economy (2001) Co-editor.
Essays in the Economic History of the Atlantic World (1997).
How Much is That in Real Money? A Historical Price Index for Use as a Deflator of Money Values in the Economy of the United States (1992; reprinted, 1993; 2^nd ed., rev., 2001)