Sweet Slavery

What surprised me most about the sugar production was the effort necessary to produce such an in demand good, “Once planted, the cane sprouts and with adequate heat and moisture may grow an inch a day for six weeks. It becomes ripe- and reaches the optimum condition for extraction- in a dry season after anywhere from nine to eighteen months. ‘Ratoon’ cane… is normally cut about every twelve months. Seed cane cuttings in the tropics take longer to reach maturity. In all cases cane must be cut when ready so as not to lose its juice… and once it is cut, the juice must be rapidly extract to avoid rot…” (pg. 21)

For such a complex process one would expect an increase in technological advances to parallel the growing request for the product; yet from the seventeenth century to the nineteenth century, “…sugar production grew steadily, as more westerners consumed sugar and each consumer used it more heavily. Yet technological changes in the field, in grinding, and even in refining itself were relatively minor. Generally speaking, the enlarged market for sugar was satisfied by a steady extension of production rather than by sharp increases in yield per acre of land or ton of cane, or in productivity per worker.” (page 35).

Thus my opinion regarding the need for slavery during the uprising of sugar fame throughout the world. The level of energy and labor needed to keep up with European demands outweighed paid labor, or every free labor, a concept I am unsure about: “Slaves were decidedly important, perhaps crucial; but a substantial amount of the labor was actually done by free wage earners paid partly in kind- some of them specialists, others temporary laborers.” 32

The passage continues to explain that although this sounds odd, it wasn’t as uncommon as one might believe. How could a system survive on free wage earners? What provoked “The Canarian system” to have equal sharing of produce between owners and workers? Such an idea seems unrealistic in today’s society and standards. I’m quite confused with this concept in general but intrigued all the same.

Nevertheless, a large workforce was still necessary to attend to the difficult process, a demand difficult that became difficult to fill: “…The prices of labor-costly goods like sugar rose after the Black Death. Indeed, in (Galloway’s) opinion, it was the expanded use of slave labor to compensate for plague-connected morality that initiated the strange and enduring relationship between sugar and slavery: ‘The link between sugar cultivation and slavery which was to last until the nineteenth century became firmly foraged in Crete, Cyprus, and Morocco.’” (page 29)

Along with this, the “…rapid destruction of the indigenous Arawakan-speaking Taino Indians of Santo Domingo had left too little manpower even for the gold mines, let alone for the experimental sugar plantations… By 1509, enslaved Africans were being imported to work the royal mines; others soon followed to power the sugar industry.” This passage especially put the importance of sugar into perspective for me. By divvying up their limited resources, sugar must be significantly vital to the market, or at least to the players of power. With only a small portion of labor available, and most attending to the ROYAL mines, I am very surprised sugar was put at a close second. This is implying the value of sugar is equally as beneficial to royalty as actual gold itself, which I find difficult to believe!

Beyond this though, is a level of competition that mixed with the age of colonization globally. As all countries raced to inhabit and control as much land as possible, ‘sugar islands’ were being produced in equal measure. It was a race between the most dominant supremacies, and no one knew who was going to win: “…England shifted from buying modest quantities of sugar from Mediterranean shippers… to establishing her own sugar colonies… On the one hand, they represent an extension of empire outward, but on the other, they mark an absorption, a kind of swallowing up, of sugar consumption as a national habit. Like tea, sugar came to define English ‘character’.” (page 39).

With the growth of nations came marking territory; by marking territory came the need to protect the newfound land, owned by the motherland. “Individual entrepreneurs were encouraged to establish sugar-cane (and other) plantations on the Atlantic islands, manned with African slaves and destined to produce sugar for Portugal and other European markets, because their presence safeguarded the extension of Portuguese trade routes around Africa and toward the Orient.” (page 30).

These plantations helped start a game amongst the richer, who could produce more? Who had the better sugar? At the time, the color of whiteness sugar held pronounced the level of purity. Thus, everything became part of the competition, part of the capitalist game. Such as Santo Domingo: “By the 1530s, the island had a ‘fairly stable total’ of thirty-four mills; and by 1568, ‘plantations owning a hundred-fifty to two hundred slaves were not uncommon. A few of the more magnificent estates possessed up to five hundred slaves, with production figures correspondingly high.’ One interesting feature of this development was the part played by the state and, indeed, by civil servants, who owned, administered, bought, and sold plantations.” (page 34). Not only was the creation of sugar important, but the sales surrounding this economy boomed as well. What good business man would look away from such a production??

None. Not the consumers, who were addicted just like the spread of opium. Not the business men, who not only had estates but given an extensive group of manpower to control. Not the royalty, who were forever competing with fellow countries to have the upper hand. Not a single class or aspect of the world could turn away from the sugar production. In all reality, sugar control us, our entire race.

“From humble beginnings on the island of Barbados in the 1640s, the British sugar industry expanded with astounding rapidity, engulfing first that island and, soon after, Jamaica… As English sugar became price-competitive with Portuguese sugar, England was able to drive Portugal out of the north European trade. From the resulting monopoly came monopoly prices, however, and then stiff competition from the French. In 1660, sugar was enumerated (and taxed).

In 1660, England consumed 1,000 hogsheads of sugar and exported 2,000... and by 1753, when England imported 110,000 hogsheads, she re-exported only 6,000.” (page 39).

It’s human nature that drives competition and between the people of power, the stakes only became higher, especially when “England fought the most, conquered the most colonies, imported the most slaves… and went furthest and fastest in creating a plantation system. The most important product of that system was sugar.”

Sugar became apart of the system, and not just one system, EVERY system: “But by the end of that century, sugar was outpacing tobacco in both the British and the French West Indies; by 1700, the value of sugar reaching England and Wales was double that of tobacco.” (page 34). But it did not stop there; the reach of sugar expanded just as the different types of consumption did as well:  “At the consumption end, changes were both numerous and diverse. Sugar steadily changed from being a specialized- medicinal, condimental, ritual, or display- commodity into an ever more common food” (pages 37-38). Because this need, this dependency, only expanded, the sugar industry could not shy away from being characterized by slave labor. Just as the need for slaves in America dwindled prior to the cotton boom, slavery went hand in hand with sugar for centuries.