Rizwaan Abbas and Donica Belisle. Violence of Sugar: Girmit and Canadian Business in Colonial Fiji.

This research investigates Girmit and Canadian business in Navua, Fiji. It looks at the dates 1890 to 1922 and also considers ongoing legacies. Currently we are authoring a book about this topic.

A preliminary article from this research is Donica Belisle, “VIOLENCE AND PROFIT: Canada’s Debts to the Girmitiyas of Fiji,” published in a special issue of British Columbia History about Indo-Fijian history, edited by Rizwaan Abbas (Summer 2024, pp. 22-26).

Donica Belisle and Daylene Sliz. Sugar in English Canadian Home Economics Cookbooks.

This research shows how English Canadian home economics instructors taught pupils about sugar. It covers the dates 1898 to 1977 and looks at home economics texts published in Victoria, Regina, Winnipeg, Toronto, Saint John, and Halifax. Of concern is uncovering the place of sugar within settler Canadian cuisine.

Century of Sugar: Sugar in Canadian Home Economics Cookbooks.

This research continues investigations of sugar in Canadian home economics. Viewing English and French language cookbooks as documents of colonization, it determines the role of sugar in English and French Canadian pedagogy. It also takes the study of sugar forward into the 1980s and 1990s.

Donica Belisle and Christina MacKinnon. Edited Diary of a Canadian Plantation Wife in Colonial Fiji.

We are currently editing and annotating a diary from 1906 that was written by a Canadian plantation wife in Fiji. Rather than celebrate this diary, our work demonstrates how this text documents the violence of colonial extraction in Oceania.

Married to Extraction: Diary of a Canadian Plantation Wife in Colonial Fiji.

This scholarly article discusses a 1906 diary kept by a Canadian plantation wife in Fiji. It shows how its author contributed to the business of colonial extraction as well as helped erase its legacies through private diary keeping.

Review of Across the Kalapani: Uttar Pradesh to Fiji. By Sunita Narayan.

Suva, Pacific Studies Press, 2021. 166 pp., illustrations, maps, glossary. ISBN 9789821012539 (paperback). The Journal of Pacific History, Published online: 02 Jan 2025.

This is a review of Sunita Narayan’s important book about Girmit on sugarcane plantations in Navua, Fiji. Navua is where the Vancouver-Fiji Sugar Company, a subsidiary of Rogers Sugar, was based between 1905 and 1922.

Capitalism and Atrocity: Ulbe Bosma's The World of Sugar.

Review of The World of Sugar: How the Sweet Stuff Transformed Our Politics, Health, and Environment over Two Thousand Years. By Ulbe Bosma. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2023.

Agricultural History 1 February 2025; 99 (1): 102–107.

This review suggests that The World of Sugar provides crucial updates to Sidney Mintz’s analyses. Spanning the history of sugar from origins to the present, it even surpasses them in some respects.

Is Cane Sugar ‘Canadian’? The Disavowal of Global Lives and Lands in Canadian Sugar Marketing.

Global Food History. 15 November 2023.

This article emerged from inquiries into Rogers Sugar’s marketing. It suggests that global producers of sugar have been omitted from Rogers’ advertising and Canadian producers have been highlighted. This history has mystified the relations of production and, in effect, has also erased contributions by global producers.