Stuart B. Schwartz. Tropical Babylons: Sugar and the Making of the Atlantic World, 1450-1680. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004. xiii + 347 pp. ISBN 0-8078-2875-0, $59.95 (cloth); ISBN 0-8078-5538-3, $22.50 (paper).

This volume examines the surprisingly complex history of thewestward shift in sugar production from the Mediterranean toAmerica in the fifteenth to seventeenth centuries. Many factorsinfluenced this shift, including those most often studied: therise and growth of merchant capital, slavery, and technologicalchange. The local-level studies aggregated here reexamine thisdevelopment and thereby reveal the complex evolution and thegreat