Apr 14, 2015 - Sale 2380

Sale 2380 - Lot 302

Price Realized: $ 2,250
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 1,500 - $ 2,500
(JAMAICA.) Arozarena, Ramón de; and Pedro Bauduy. A Cuban manuscript report on sugar production in Jamaica. 66 manuscript pages (leaves numbered 72-104), apparently in Arozarena's tidy hand and signed by both authors. Folio, disbound; toned, long closed tears to leaves 80 and 81, minor edge wear. Havana, 25 June 1828

Additional Details

In 1828, two Cubans went to Jamaica to study sugar production. Both islands had long histories of intensive production that had exhausted the soil and damaged the environment, and the Cubans wanted to see how their neighbors had adapted. They reported that the Jamaican ecology was more damaged than their own, with most of the forest cover being destroyed. The scarcity of wood had led to changes in the refinement process which the Cubans hoped to emulate, requiring far less firewood. They also advocated the use of fertilizer, and praised the superior Jamaican infrastructure of roads and irrigation. The report contains several statistical tables and narrative accounts of many aspects of Jamaican agriculture, as well as rum production. It was published later that year as "Informe presentado . . . el estado de la agricultura, y elaboracion y beneficio de los frutos coloniales en la de Jamayca." See Monzote, From Rainforest to Cane Field in Cuba, page 148.