Documenting the Louisiana Sugar Economy, 1845-1917: An on-line Database Project

Documenting Louisiana Sugar (http://www.sussex.ac.uk/louisianasugar), an on-line database project rolled out in July 2008 and now freely available, provides historians and social scientists with an innovative tool for examining one sector of the plantation economy and agrarian society in the American South. Utilizing exceptionally detailed annual crop returns and additional census records, the project makes available two fully searchable databases that allow users to examine in micro and macro detail the evolution of one of America's definitive plantation crops, namely cane sugar. These are available on the project's website, which also includes census material, illustrations, bibliographies, and essays. What follows is a report describing the evolution and aims of this innovative effort to make primary sources widely available in digitized form on the internet.