Bittersweet: Sugar Policy in France during the “Great” Depression of the Late Nineteenth Century

In 1884 and 1885 the Governor of the French colony of Guadeloupe, Léonce Laugier, addressed a series of impassioned reports to the Minister of the Colonies, each chronicling the colony’s unprecedented economic crisis. Laugier’s missives reflected the island’s major reversal of fortunes in course of the nineteenth century. In the early part of the century, Guadeloupe ranked among the world’s major sugar producers and provided the bulk of the sugar imported to, consumed in, and exported from metropolitan France. The Guadeloupean sugar industry amassed significant wealth for the metropole and supported a vibrant society on the island. Less than a century later, however, Guadeloupe’s sugar industry produced at a loss, and the administration was only able to meet basic needs with assistance and loans from metropolitan France.

This paper will examine the decline of Guadeloupe’s sugar industry, ultimately asking why France continued to support sugar production in the Guadeloupe when it was no longer necessary or financially viable. In exploring this history, this paper will consider how technological innovation in the metropole reduced the need for the colonial crop, yet the “great depression” of the late nineteenth century and rivalry with imperial England and Germany compelled France to maintain sugar production in Guadeloupe under the guise of “national interest.” In charting the decline of the Guadeloupean sugar industry and the French Republic’s decision to maintain it, this paper will show how colonial commodities, like sugar, open up new ways to situate the history of modern France within a global framework.