Caribbean islands became sugar-production machines, powered by slave labor. Slaves on an Antiguan Sugar PlantationThomas Hearne (CC BY-NC-SA). Study with Quizlet and memorize flashcards containing terms like Which of the following accurately describes labor on Caribbean sugar plantations?, What role did Europeans play in the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century slave trade in Africa?, Which of the following strategies contributed to the early success of the Qing dynasty? Life on a Colonial Sugar Plantation. Cartwright, Mark. The legislators proceeded to define Africans as non-humana form of property to be owned by purchasers and their heirs forever. The sugar then had to be packed and transported to ports for shipping. The production of sugar required - and killed - hundreds of thousands of enslaved Africans. By 1750, British and French plantations produced most of the world's sugar and its byproducts, molasses and rum.At the heart of the plantation system was the labor of millions of enslaved workers . In terms of its scale and its social, psychological, spiritual and physical brutality, specifically inflicted upon Africans as a targeted ethnicity, this vastly profitable business, and the considerable subsequent suppression of the inhumanity and criminal nature of slavery, was ubiquitous and usurping of moral values. In the Shadow of the Plantation: Caribbean History and Legacy (Ian Randle publisher, Kingston, Jamaica, 2002), pp. Sugar and Slavery. World History Encyclopedia is a non-profit organization. Cane plantations soon spread throughout the Caribbean and South America and made immense profits for planters and merchants. One hut is cut away to reveal the inside. On early plantations, hand-presses were used to crush the cane, but these were soon replaced by animal-powered presses and then windmills or, more often, watermills; hence plantations were usually located near a stream or river. The work in the fields was gruelling, with long hours spent in the hot sun, supervised by overseers who were quick to use the whip. Ships were overcrowded and overheated, slaves chained . An infestation of tiny insects would descend on the luscious green sugar plants and turn them black. Slavery had been abolished across most of the world by then, and these sugar plantations all came to depend on indentured workers, mostly from India. Resistance to the oppression of slavery and ethnic colonialism has made the Caribbean a principal site of freedom politics and democratic desire. The Amelioration Act of 1798 improved conditions for slaves, forcing plantation owners to provide clothes, food, medical treatment and basic education, as well as prohibiting severe and cruel punishment. The relevance of Beckfords thesis remains striking today, and conversations about the legitimacy of democracy still reverberate around his research. Sugar of lesser quality with a brownish colour tended to be consumed locally or was only used to make preserves and crystallised fruit. In recent years, a third source of information, archaeology, has begun to contribute to our understanding. These findings regarding the social and economic ramifications of Caribbean plantation slavery, as well those regarding Asian immigrants, put the traditional interpretation of the post-slavery period into question. slave frontiers. Find out more about our work towards the Sustainable Development Goals. Some 12 to 20 million Africans were enslaved in the western hemisphere after an Atlantic voyage of 6 to 10 weeks. The sugar that saturates the American diet has a barbaric history as the 'white gold' that fueled slavery. In short, the Caribbean that began its modern history as a centre of crimes against humanity can turn this world on its head and be recast as the centre of a new consciousness that celebrates justice and freedom for all. At the time there were some people that argued that the free labor system was more Some owners permitted marriages between slaves - formal or informal - while others actively separated couples. The first type consists of accounts from travel writers or former residents of the West Indies from the 17th and 18th centuries who describe slave houses that they saw in the Caribbean; the second are contemporary illustrations of slave housing. They were washed and their skin was oiled. Capitalism and black slavery were intertwined. While cocoa and coffee plantations were part of the economy of slavery, sugar remains the largest industry in Jamaica, employing about 50,000 people. I have known some of them to be fond of eating grasshoppers, or locusts; others will wrap up cane rats, in bonano [banana] leaves, and roast them in wood embers. A mill plant needed anywhere from 60 to 200 workers to operate it. . A roof of plantain-leaves with a few rough boards, nailed to the coarse pillars which support it, form the whole building.. Passed in 1661, this comprehensive law defined Africans as heathens and brutes not fit to be governed by the same laws as Christians. All of the above tasks could be done by unskilled labour and were done mostly by slaves and a minority of paid labourers. Slaves were permitted at weekends to grow food for their own sustenance on small plots of land. The Atlantic economy, in every aspect, was effectively sustained by African enslavement. Brazil was the world's first sugar plantation in 1518, and it was the leading exporter of sugar to Europe by the late 1500s. At the heart of the plantation system was the labor of millions of enslaved workers, transplanted across the Atlantic like the sugar they produced. . Douglas V. Armstrong is an anthropologist from New York whose studies on plantation slavery have been focused on the Caribbean. Capitalism and black slavery were intertwined. While the historic pictures provide us with some useful information, theytell us little of the people who inhabited the houses, the furniture and fittings in the interior, and the materials from which they were built. Images of Caribbean Slavery (Coconut Beach, Florida: Caribbean Studies Press, 2016). In comparison, in the 17th century a white indentured labourer or servant would cost a planter 10 for only a few years work but would cost the same in food, shelter and clothing. This allowed the owner or manager to keep an eye on his enslaved workforce, while also reinforcing the inferior social status of the enslaved. Popular and grass-roots activism have created a legacy of opposition to racism and ethnic dominance. Cartwright, M. (2021, July 06). Sugar Cane Plantation. Find out what the UN in the Caribbean is doing towards the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals. Over time, as the populations of colonies evolved, mixed-race European-locals, freed slaves, and sometimes even slaves were employed in these technical positions. During the 1800's, three out of every five Africans who came to the Caribbean were brought as slaves for sugar plantations. It is privileged to host senior United Nations officials as well as distinguished contributors from outside the United Nations system whose views are not necessarily those of the United Nations. Bibliography World History Publishing is a non-profit company registered in the United Kingdom. After being established in the Caribbean islands, the plantation system spread during the 16th, . Yellow fever The main source of labor, until the abolition of chattel slavery, was enslaved Africans. For only $5 per month you can become a member and support our mission to engage people with cultural heritage and to improve history education worldwide. In 1724 Father Labat drew his idealised design for an estate layout based on his 12 years experience of managing an estate on the French island of Martinique. Most plantation slaves were shipped from Africa, in the case of those destined for Portuguese colonies, to a holding depot like the Cape Verde Islands. The planters increasingly turned to buying enslaved men, women and children who were brought from Africa. "Life on a Colonial Sugar Plantation." By the mid-16th century, Brazil had become the worlds largest producer of sugar. Slave houses were on the left, and above them the mansion/great house. Please support World History Encyclopedia. Similarly, the boundaries and names shown, and the designations used, in maps or articles do not necessarily imply endorsement or acceptance by the United Nations. Enslaved Africans were forced to engage in a variety of laborious activities, all of them back-breaking. Sugar production was important on a number of Caribbean islands in the late 1600s. The practice was abolished in most places during the 19th century. 2 (2000): 213-236. Consequently, after 1660 very few new white servants reached St Kitts or Nevis; the Black enslaved Africans had taken their place. Whatever the crop, labouring life was dictated by the cycles of the agricultural year. As the sugar industry grew, the amount of laborers that once was a working population had tremendously diminished. The Caribbean was at the core of the crime against humanity induced by the transatlantic slave trade and slavery. As these new plantation zones had lower costs and the ability to increase the scale of production, they provided opportunities for British capital. Europe remains a colonial power over some 15 per cent of the regions population, and the relationship between the United States and Puerto Rico is generally understood as colonialist. They found that thelocations of slave villages shared some common features. African slaves became increasingly sought after to work in the unpleasant conditions of heat and humidity. Atlantic Ocean. Then there were the indigenous people who might have been subdued by initial military campaigns but, nevertheless, remained in many places a significant threat to European settlements. Fifty years ago, in 1972, George Beckford, an Economics Professor at the University of the West Indies, published a seminal monograph entitled Persistent Poverty, in which he explained the impoverishment of the black majority in the Caribbean in terms of the institutional mechanism of the colonial economy and society. It is now universally understood and accepted that the transatlantic trade in enchained, enslaved Africans was the greatest crime against humanity committed in what is now defined as the modern era. The Caribbean has the lowest youth enrolment in higher education in the hemisphere, an indication of the hostility to popular education under colonialism that is resilient in recent public policy. Presenting evidence of past wrongs now facilitates the call for a new global order that includes fairness in access and equality in participation. Inside the plantation works, the conditions were often worse, especially the heat of the boiling house. ", https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Sugar_plantations_in_the_Caribbean&oldid=1142688340, This page was last edited on 3 March 2023, at 21:15. Many plantation owners preferred to import new slaves rather than providing the means and conditions for the survival of their existing slaves. With most of the workforce consisting of unpaid labour, sugar plantations made fortunes for those owners who could operate on a large enough scale, but it was not an easy life for smaller plantation owners in territories rife with tropical diseases, indigenous populations keen to regain their territories, and the vagaries of pre-modern agriculture. Capitalism and black slavery were intertwined. The rise of slavery. 1995 "Slave life on Caribbean sugar plantations: Some unanswered questions," in Palmi, Stephan, ed., Slave Cultures and the Cultures of Slavery. The many legacies of over 300 years of slavery weighing on popular culture and consciousness persist as ferociously debilitating factors. Part of the National Museums Liverpool group. An overview of sugar plantations in the Caribbean. Before the arrival and devastation of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Caribbean region was buckling under the strain of proliferating, chronic non-communicable diseases. Until the Amelioration Act was passed in 1798, which forced planters to improve conditions for enslaved workers, many owners simply replaced the casualties by importing more slaves from West Africa. This latter group included those who lived in towns and not on their plantations, nobles who never even visited the colony, and religious institutions. Capitalism and black slavery were intertwined. The most well-known portrait of the Louisiana sugar country comes from Solomon Northup, the free black New Yorker famously kidnapped into slavery in 1841 and rented out by his master for work on . and more. This other pandemic is discussed in terms of the racist culture of colonialism, in which the black population is generally considered addicted to foods containing high levels of sugar and salt. Examining the archaeology of slavery in the Caribbean sugar plantations. Sometimes land had to be terraced, although not usually in Brazil. It was the worst form of sugar blight, capable of ruining a crop within a matter of days. The houses measured 15 to 20 feet long and had two rooms. Some Rights Reserved (2009-2023) under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license unless otherwise noted. Prints depicting enslaved people producing sugar in Antigua, 1823. Barbados, nearing a half million slaves to work the cane fields in the heyday of Caribbean sugar exportation, used 90 percent of its arable land to grow sugar cane. Slave villages represent an important but little-known part of the Caribbean landscape. The number of enslaved labor crews doubled on sugar plantations. On the Caribbean island of Barbados, in 1643, there were 18,600 white farmers, their families and servants. Eliminating the toxic contaminant of hierarchical ethnic racism from all societies, and allowing them to embrace a horizontal perspective on ethnic and cultural diversity and ways of living, will enable the twenty-first century to be better than any prior period in modernity. Barbados in the Caribbean became the first large-scale colony populated by a black majority, and South Carolina in the United States assumed the same status. After the abolition of slavery, indentured laborers from India, China, and Java migrated to the Caribbean to mostly work on the sugar plantations. When Brazilian sugar production was at its peak from 1600 to 1625, 150,000 African slaves were brought across the Atlantic. The legacy of the social and economic institution of slavery is to be found everywhere within these societies and is particularly dominant in the Caribbean. Higman, Barry W. Slave Populations of the British Caribbean, 1807-1834 Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1984. By the late 18th century, some plantation owners laid out slave villages in neat orderly rows, as we can see from estate maps and contemporary views. During the first half of the seventeenth century about ten thousand slaves a year had arrived from Africa. The enslaved were then sold in the southern USA, the Caribbean Islands and South America, where they were used to work the plantations. It is for this and related reasons that the Caribbean has emerged as an epicenter of the global reparatory justice movement. Slave labour has a connetion to sugar production. There were 6,400 African . Presenting evidence of past wrongs now facilitates the call for a new global order that includes fairness in access and equality in participation. Then there are concerns regarding the standard markers of economic underdevelopment, such as widespread illiteracy, endemic hunger, systemic child abuse, inadequate public health facilities, primitive communications infrastructure, widespread slum dwelling, and chronically low enrolment and student performance at all levels of the education system. The eighteen visible huts of the village are arranged in no particular order within a stone-walled enclosure, which is surrounded by cane fields on three sides. Enslaved workers who lived and worked close to the owners household were in the position to receive rewards or gifts of money or other items. (61), Colonial Sugar Cane ManufacturingUnknown Artist (Public Domain). Sign up for our free weekly email newsletter! Capitalism and black slavery were intertwined. The cut cane was placed on rollers which fed it into a crushing machine. It was the basis of wealth creation in both production and commerce. Those engaged in the slave trade were primarily driven by the huge profits to be gained, both in the Caribbean and at home. Yet in 1788 a Jamaican census recorded that only 226,432 enslaved men, women and children were alive on the island. London: Heinemann, 1967. The Atlantic economy, in every aspect, was effectively sustained by African enslavement. Since abandonment, their locations have been forgotten and in many cases leave no trace above ground. The slaves were brought from Africa to work on the plantations in the Caribbean and South America. The plan of the 18th century slave village at Jessups is a good example of this kind of layout. Please note that some of these recommendations are listed under our old name, Ancient History Encyclopedia. The Caribbean contribution, therefore, will help make the world a safer place for citizens who insist that it is a human right to live free from fear of violence, ethnic targeting and racial discrimination. It was not uncommon to give new arrivals a whipping just to show them, if they had not already realised, that their owners had no more sympathy for their situation than the cattle they owned. International Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Slavery and the Transatlantic Slave Trade -- 25 March 2022, The "Ark of Return", the permanent memorial to honour the victims of slavery and the transatlantic slave trade, located at the Visitors' Plaza of United Nations Headquarters in New York. Enslaved Africans were brought to the Caribbean as an abundant and cheap source of labour for sugar plantations. They are close to the animal enclosures, so the labourers could keep watch over the livestock, and set below the plantation house which stands on a small hill. However, it was in Brazil and the Caribbean that demand for African slaves took off in spectacular fashion. It is privileged to host senior United Nations officials as well as distinguished contributors from outside the United Nations system whose views are not necessarily those of the United Nations. Black slavery was a modern form of racial plunder, and the obvious consequences of this economic extraction are seen in structural underdevelopment. Alan H. Adamson, Sugar Without Slaves: The Political Economy of British Guiana, 1838-1904 (New Haven, 1972), 119-21 . New Orleans became the Walmart of people-selling. Together they laid the foundation for a twenty-first century global contribution to political reform with a democratic sensibility. Most Caribbean islands were covered with sugar cane fields and mills for refining the crop. Carts had to be loaded and oxen tended to take the cane to the processing plant. In pursuit of sugar fortunes, millions of people were worked to death, and then replaced by more enslaved Africans brought by still more slave ships. Another constant worry was unfamiliar tropical diseases which often proved fatal with the colonists, and particularly new arrivals. Itscampaign for reparations for the crimes of slavery and colonialismhas served as a template for the Global South in seeking a level playing field for development within the international economic order. The scale of human traffic was relatively small, but the model was now in place that would be copied and refined elsewhere following the Portuguese colonization of the Azores in 1439, the Cape Verde Islands (1462), and So Tom and Principe (1486). https://www.worldhistory.org/article/1795/life-on-a-colonial-sugar-plantation/. A problem for all male slaves was the fact that there were far more of them than females brought from Africa. Raising sugar cane could be a very profitable business, but producing refined sugar was a highly labour-intensive process. However, they are integral in creating a direct link between past and present because villages represent the homes of the ancestors of many modern people in the islands today. Our latest articles delivered to your inbox, once a week: Our mission is to engage people with cultural heritage and to improve history education worldwide. Those plantation owners who could not afford their own mill plant used those of the larger concerns and paid a percentage of the resulting crop for the privilege. Slave houses in Barbados have been described as; consisting most frequently of wattle or stick huts, which were roofed with palm thatch. In the 15th century, it was the Portuguese who first adapted a plantation system for growing sugar cane (Saccharum officinarum) on a large scale. 23 March 2015. During this time period there was 1.4 million slaves in the caribbean which was 40 percent of the 3.5 million slaves in america. Sugar PlantationsSugar cane cultivation best takes place in tropical and subtropical climates; consequently, sugar plantations in the United States that utilized slave labor were located predominantly along the Gulf coast, particularly in the southern half of Louisiana. During the 18th century Cuba depended increasingly on the sugarcane crop and on the expansive, slave-based plantations that produced it. By the late 18th century Bryan Edwards drew on his own experience as a British planter in Jamaica to describe cottages of the enslaved workforce. By the middle of the 18th century the slave plantation system was fully implemented in the Caribbean sugar colonies. Running a website with millions of readers every month is expensive. As cane was planted each month in one part of a plantation, the harvesting was an ongoing process for much of the year, with the more intense periods requiring slaves to work night and day. The slaves working the sugar plantation were caught in an unceasing rhythm of arduous labor . View images from this item (3) William Clark was a 19th century British artist who was invited to Antigua by some of its planters. Enslaved Africans were also much less expensive to maintain than indenturedEuropean servants or paid wage labourers. Revd Smith observed. We contribute a share of our revenue to remove carbon from the atmosphere and we offset our team's carbon footprint. This illustration shows the layout of a sugar plantation. Submitted by Mark Cartwright, published on 06 July 2021. At that time the Black slaves did not sleep in hammocks but on boards laid on the dirt floor. Plantations, Sugar Cane and Slavery on JSTOR are two . . Sugar cane plantations typified Caribbean and Brazil by means of enslaved labourers (Graham 2007). Contemporary pictures of slave villages drawn by visitors or residents in the Caribbean show that slave houses often consisted of small rectangular huts. Enter your email address to receive notifications of new posts by email. They have a pair of drinking glasses and a bottle on the table. 22 May 2015. A great number of planters and harvesters were required to plant, weed, and cut the cane which was ready for harvest five or six months after planting in the most fertile areas. Laura Trevelyan's aristocratic relatives had more than 1,000 slaves across six sugar plantations on the Caribbean island in the 19th century. Jamaica and Barbados, the two historic giants of plantation sugar production and slavery, now struggle to avoid amputations that are often necessitated by medical complications resulting from the uncontrolled management of these diseases. Before the arrival and devastation of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Caribbean region was buckling under the strain of proliferating, chronic non-communicable diseases. In the 1650s when sugar started to take over from tobacco as the main cash crop on Nevis, enslaved Africans formed only 20% of the population. Between 12th and 14th Streets There were some serious problems, then, to be faced by plantation owners. But as the growth of the sugar plantations took off, and the demand for labour grew, the numbers of enslaved Africans transported to the Caribbean islands and to mainland North and South America increased hugely. The estate map of Clarkes estate in Nevis, dated early 19th century, shows a slave village on a strip of land between a road on one side and a steep ravine on the other. Together they laid the foundation for a twenty-first century global contribution to political reform with a democratic sensibility. So Tom and Principe were really the first European colonies to develop large-scale sugar plantations employing a sizeable workforce of African slaves. When slavery was abolished across the British empire in 1833, the family received 4,293 12s 6d, a very large sum in 1836, in compensation for freeing 189 enslaved people. There were many instances of slave uprisings resulting in the deaths of the plantation owner, their family, and slaves who had remained loyal to their owner. Europe remains a colonial power over some 15 per cent of the regions population, and the relationship between the United States and Puerto Rico is generally understood as colonialist.