Continuities and discontinuities in modes of production and exploitation in the cane sugar processing industries of Costa Rica

Abstract

The history of technology is popularly pre? sented as continuous and cumulative, a com? pounding of tools and ideas to ever more com? plex and efficient tools and ideas, as for exam? ple in the PBS television series, "Connections." The "revolutions" in technology are very few. The Industrial Revolution of Europe and the United States may be one of the truly discon? tinuous "revolutions," although even in this rapid development of new techniques there is much continuity. This Industrial Revolution at least involves displacement of human and ani? mal energy by fossil fuel, coal and petroleum, and the standardization of production through technological and organizational innovations which create highly uniform goods and services, often labeled "commodities." One long-standing world commodity is sugar, nearly pure sucrose. Today most sugar is still made from cane. The beet sugar industry does not pre-date the Industrial Revolution, but is a part of it. Production of sugar from cane is an ancient process, nearly 2,000 years old. Until the nineteenth century technological changes in this industry were few, such as increasing the number and size of open evaporating pans, placing the pans on a fixed furnace base with heat flow running counter to the flow of sugar juice, shifting from wood to spent cane (ba? gasse) as the principal fuel, using metal-clad grinding drums instead of wooden ones, or re placing animal power as the motive force for the mill by water power. Abruptly in the nine? teenth century major inventions originating within the sugar industry created a whole new industry, a new mode of production. Then vacuum evaporators, large centrifuges, filter presses, and the pumps and plumbing needed for materials handling in this new, continuous process were introduced over a brief period, rapidly replacing the old batch, discontinuous open-pan process. The product, raw sugar or muscovado, is a world commodity, uniform, not dependent on the skill of a sugar master as the old process was. The radical change in technology is obvious. As Moreno Fraginals showed for Cuba [ 1 ], the modern sugarmill, the ingenio or central did not evolve from the ancient mill, the trapiche. Even though the modern sugar process is basic? ally the same as the traditional one, that is to say extraction of juice from sugar cane and boiling off excess water to the pointpf crystal? lization, its technological sophistication, its production of a uniform world commodity sugar make it closer to modern beet sugar pro? cessing. The traditional, trapiche process was one of the first "transfers of technology," to use the modern term, of the Portuguese and Spanish conquerors of the New World. They also brought the raw material, sugar cane, and early ?