FRANCE, GREAT BRITAIN, AND THE INTERNATIONAL SUGAR BOUNTY QUESTION, 1895-1902 By OVERTON GREER GANONG A DISSERTATION PRESENTED TO THE GRADUATE COUI'JCIL OF THE UNI\^'RSITY OF FLORIDA IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA 19 72 Copyright by Overton Greer Ganong 1972 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS this The first debt of gratitude in a project of committee: to sort must go to the writer's supervisory Entner, who first Dr. Harry Paul, chairman, to Dr. Marvin Sturgill, who read suggested the topic, and to Dr. Claude C. also like to and criticized the manuscript. I would French express my appreciation to the staffs of the nationale, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Bibliotheque the Belgian Ministry of Foreign the Archives nationales , Record Office Affairs, the British Museum, and the Public for their for their cooperation and assistance and collections. permission to quote from documents in their D. Wyn Evans, In particular, I would like to thank Mr. Birmingham, and Rare Book Librarian at the University of Gloucestershire County Mr. Brian S. Smith, Archivist of the private Records Office, for permitting me to consult the Hicks-Bepch. papers of Joseph Chamberlain and Sir Michael typed the Thanks are due as well to Mrs. Mary Lopez, who final copy. Finally, my wife Yolanda merits special recognition, putting up with not only for her encouragement but also for this thing for so long. Ill , PREFACE Few success stories of the nineteenth century can rival that of the European beet sugar industry. Born at the time of the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars the infant industry was coddled and nursed by anxious governments cut off by the British blockade from traditional colonial supplies. This intimate association between state and industry endured and fostered the latter 's stupendous growth. Within seventy-five years beet sugar had broken the tropical monopoly; European nations had become the world's leading sugar exporters.^ European society reaped bountiful rewards from the young industry. One renewed scholar exuberantly proclaimed the lowly beet "the greatest agricultural innovation of the nineteenth century."^ Its advent transformed cereal cultivation and livestock raising. It stimulated the application of science and technology to farming, fostered the machine tool and chemical industries, and provided another incentive for railroad development. Governments found it a lucrative source of tax revenue. Sugar, no longer a luxury, sweetened the daily lives of millions, making their diet more interesting and their teeth more carious. Yet with the benefits came headaches. From government IV the syste., which strengthened p.o.notion arose the bounty and incited overproduction industry but which also „id-century, world .ar.et. After depressed prices in the but rts with growing disfavor, governments eyed the system intense • 1 the formicableKio task.task Given elimination proved a no national sugar industries, competition between the problem act alone. The bounty government could afford to conference concert, .he international oould only be solved in means of dealing wrth increasingly popular as a v,as becoming growing problems engendered by the the multitude of new Between 1863 and of the world.' economic interdependence the sugar question, conferences wrestled with X,02 ten such drove the while the bounty system failure followed failure, and deeper into crisis. world sugar trade deeper was a the sugar industry Difficulty arose because considered survival1 and,r,/i growthrr-rnwth weWere political industry, whose farmers, , country, interest.^ „^*. InTn eve.yAve'-v vital to the national formed an fi„o^=— the sugsugar interests— manufacturers, and refiners nature of the industry, influential lobby. The dual support and manufacture, drew involving both agriculture respects, industrial circles. In many from both agrarian and The linking the two interests. it served as a bridge weight to the spin-off effects lent industry's beneficial the last pleas for protection. By sugar interests' urgent had become century those interests quarter of the nineteenth weigh carefully governments vera obliged to so powerful that sugar of revisions in their the political consequences legislation. V The great depression of the 1880 's and '90's struck the beet sugar industry a heavy blow, and its effects were exacerbated by the bounty system, which continued to promote growth and overproduction. A solution appeared increasingly imperative, not only to the European producers but also to Great Britain, the world's largest free sugar market. While her consumers reveled in a flood of cheap sugar, her West Indian colonies and her refining industry withered in the face of subsidized competition. In 189 8 she joined the major European producers in a conference at Brussels, but that venture, like its predecessors, proved abortive. After three years of arduous negotiations, another endeavor was crowned with success, the Brussels Sugar Convention of 1902. This agreement was the most daring attempt yet made to impose order and discipline upon an international commodity market. It set an important precedent for later and more sophisticated attempts at international cooperation and regulation. The convention itself has attracted considerable attention /particularly from political scientists and students of international lav/. "* But no one has closely investigated the process of its creation. The existing treatments focus only on the conferences themselves and upon the superficial aspects of the negotiations. None delve into the political and administrative factors underlying the diplomacy. These factors were crucial, for the bounty question was throughout as much a political as an economic question, and its settlement was all the more remarkable VI of chauvinistic nationalism for having occurred during an age and escalating international tensions. nations to Although economic conditions impelled the account for the outcome seek an accord, they do not wholly was also the fruit of of their efforts. The convention this study will propitious political circumstances, which themes. One is the seek to reveal. There are two basic international relations. interaction of domestic politics and frustrations of The other concerns the intricacies and study international negotiations. Although the following it does reveal is not couched in any theoretical framework, policy decisions are the a pair of fundamental truths: that that policies products of conflict and accomodation, and their person- spring from individual men and are shaped by in the decision- alities, biases, aspirations, and their place the province making apparatus. Foreign affairs are not solely Of impersonal political and economic forces. Since the bounty question ultimately involved concentration eleven countries, the reader may question the this project on France and Great Britain. The nature of the selection required a narrow definition of the topic, but Britain were was by no means arbitrary. France and Great and the the key participants. The former had undermined No latter had destroyed a promising settlement in 1888. but convention was possible without their participation, their cooperation depended upon substantial departures of from popular, long-established policies. The study VIZ their roles affords the most revealing, though still admittedly partial, view of the tortuous road to a settlement. Vlll . NOTES ^The origins of the industry have been frequently described. See particularly Noel Deerr, The History of Sugar , Vol. II, and U. S., Department of Agriculture, Report on the Culture of the Sugar Beet and the Manufacture of Sugar therefrom In" France and the United States , by V7illiajn McMurtrie, Special Report No. 28. Shorter summaries may be found in Lewis S. Ware, The Sugar Beet ..., and in Roy Gillespie Blakey, The United States Beet-Sugar Industry and the Tariff . ^Sir John Harold Clapham, The Economic Development of France and Germany, 1315-1914 , 4th ed . , p. 25. ^Francis Stewart Leland Lyons, Internationalism in Europe , 1815-1914, passim. The best large-scale treatment of the operation of the convention is Hans Jacobs, Die Internationale Zucker - konvention , written eight years after its demise. Numerous brief treatments are available . Lyons, pp. 103-10, gives a concise summary. Kurt Wilk, "The International Sugar Regime," American Political Science Reviev; , XXXIII, No. 5 (1939) , 860-78 , compares and contrasts the Brussels arrangement with later international sugar accords. Wilhelm Kaufmann, "Les unions Internationales de nature ^conomique," The Hague: Academie de droit international Recueil des cours , III(II of 1924), 218-22, and Jules Borel , "L' union sucriere Internationale," Revue de droit internationa l, et de legislation comparee , 2^ ser., XIV (1912) , 151-58 , are also informative. Francis Bowes Sayre, Experiments in International Administration , sets the convention in the context of other international agreements TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Ill PREFACE iv NOTES ix LIST OF TABLES xii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS xiii NOTE ON CURRENCIES XV ABSTRACT xvi CHAPTER I THE FRENCH SUGAR INDUSTRY AND ITS RIVALS 1 NOTES . 29 II THE SUGAR QUESTION IN GREAT BRITAIN. 33 NOTES 64 III THE EARLIER SUGAR CONFERENCES 68 NOTES 87 IV THE QUESTION REOPENED: FRANCE 89 NOTES 135 * 144 V THE QUESTION REOPENED: GREAT BRITAIN ' NOTES 191 VI THE CONFERENCE OF 189 8 199 NOTES 238 CHAPTER Page VII BOUNTIES AND IMPERIALISM 243 NOTES 276 VIII THE SEARCH