A non-Brahmin rich peasant elite, engaged in sugarcane cultivation for about half a century, had by the 1950s established a powerful position for themselves in the socio-political and economic life for Maharashtra. This power, which they continue to wield, has its chief economic base in sugar,...

Introduction / Stuart B. Schwartz -- Sugar in Iberia / William D. Phillips Jr. -- Sugar islands : the sugar economy of Madeira and the Canaries, 1450-1650 / Alberto Vieira -- The sugar economy of Española in the sixteenth century / Genaro Rodríguez Morel -- Sugar and slavery in early colonial...