The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 57, July 1953 - April, 1954 Page: 529

Book Reviews

Texans with a knowledge of French will have a pleasant
experience with this book; when Frenchmen finish reading it
they will have acquired some solid Texas history. The author has
gone to original sources for much of his material, and he has
used the Southwestern Historical Quarterly in numerous instances.
From the historical point of view, the French edition of the Bean
Memoires is an improvement over the limited edition of Memoir
of Col. Ellis P. Bean (W. P. Yoakum, editor) brought out by
The Book Club of Texas in 1930. While the earlier work is
beautifully illustrated, Yoakum did not attempt to make any
divisions in the manuscript covering some sixteen years. Delalande
improves his work by taking the manuscript and dividing it into
chronological chapters. With helpful footnotes as well as adequate
context giving the history of the time a particular piece of
manuscript was written, the reader is able to understand much
better of what Bean is writing.
Jean Delalande is present French Envoy Extraordinary and
Minister Plenipotentiary in Hungary. He holds numerous de-
grees including that of doctorate of laws from the University of
Montreal, Canada. He has occupied several posts with the French
administration and in 1941 served as Consul General in New
Orleans. He became an officer in the Legion of Honor in August,
1946.
DORMAN H. WINFREY
Sugar Country: The Cane Sugar Industry in the South, 1753-1950.
By J. Carlyle Sitterson. Lexington (The University of
Kentucky Press), 1953. Pp. xvi+414. $6.00.
Sugar cane growing country extends from North Carolina to
the Rio Grande and from the Atlantic and Gulf coasts into the
Piedmont. Within this large area small patches of cane are
planted as a subsistence crop, but only southern Louisiana, the
coastal lands of South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida, and the
lower Brazos and Colorado river valleys of Texas are significant
for their commercial production. Etienne de Bor6's profitable crop
of 1795 established sugar culture in Louisiana from where it
spread east and west to reach its maximum acreage by 1850o. A
slow recovery from virtual destruction during the Civil War

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