Microhistory can reveal textures of human society often omitted from the grand scope of history. John Gust and Jennifer Mathews undertake to reveal the human dimensions of sugar and rum production on two small mills—Xuxub and San Eusebio—in the Yalahau region of northeast Yucatán. They utilize archaeology to supplement the scant historical record of the region. The fertile area is well watered and marshy and flows north into the isolated Laguna Yalahau. The mills were developed in the aftermath of the mid-nineteenth-century Caste War to take advantage of abundant land, water, and potential laborers. These small mills suffered from their isolation and the vagaries of the international market, falling into ruin in the early twentieth century.
Gust and Mathews assert that the study of small-scale production of sugar and rum is marginalized in comparison to the well-known accounts of island-wide staples produced by slave labor in the greater Caribbean. They...
