The Sugar Trade

In the course of some research I've been doing lately into that rascally architect/pirate Barthelemy Lafon, I've been slowly learning the extent and (economic, historic, social) importance of the sugar (and allied slave) trade at the end of the 1700s until the Civil War.

It turns out that sugar - and slaves - built the new world to an even greater extent than I'd imagined.

believed public domain image

In the course of learning all this, I've found a couple fascinating things: the book Orders from France by Roger G. Kennedy, which is the beautifully written, entertaining story of French architects bringing neoclassicism to this side of the Atlantic (including a chapter on Lafon) and the sugar-mural Cargo by the artist Shelly Miller, which you can see HERE or on her blog HERE.