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Sugar and Slavery

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Title: Sugar and Slavery


1
Sugar and Slavery
2
  • Where and how has sugar been cultivated?
  • Why has sugar frequently been associated with
    slavery?
  • How have consumption patterns of sugar changed
    in Europe and the Western World?

3
Origins
  • Sugar cane first domesticated in New Guinea
    around 8,000 BC.
  • Transplanted to the Philippines and then to
    India.
  • Crystallised sugar first produced in India.

4
  • Sucrose introduced to Europe during 8th century
    by Arabs.
  • Sugar cane cultivated in northern Morocco,
    southern Spain and several Mediterranean islands,
    including Sicily.
  • Production shifted to Atlantic islands of São
    Tome, Madeira and the Canaries in the 15th
    century. Slave labour used for the first time.

5
  • Sugar cane brought to America by Columbus.
  • Planted in Caribbean island of Santo Domingo in
    1493.
  • Introduced to Brazil shortly after its discovery
    in 1500.
  • First shipments of sugar leave Brazil in 1520s.

6
  • Sugar a major export of the New World since the
    16th century.
  • 1570 -1650 - Brazilian sugar dominates the
    market.
  • Mid-17th century production shifts to French
    island of Haiti, formerly Saint-Domingue and
    British possessions of Barbados and Jamaica.
  • Post-1830 Cuba and Puerto Rica major producers.
  • Today, sugar is grown in Europe as sugar beet.
    Sugar cane is also grown outside of the Americas,
    in places like Mauritius and Java.

7
The Production Process
  • Sugar cane is a perennial plant that will yield a
    harvest (or safra) for several consecutive years.
  • Requires between 15 and 18 months to mature after
    it is first planted.
  • Must been weeded regularly, a task usually
    performed by gangs of 30-40 slaves.

8
  • Ripe cane cut with a scythe and sent away to be
    processed.
  • The cane-cutting procedure is very labour
    intensive.
  • Often performed by a pair of slaves, usually male
    and female, with the male cutting the cane and
    his female partner binding it into bundles.

9
William Clark, 10 Views of Antigua (1823)
10
  • Juice extracted from cut sugar cane in a mill
    known as an engenho (Brazil) or ingenio (Spanish
    America).

11
  • Liquid is then boiled, skimmed and purified in a
    series of kettles, before being poured into
    moulds and put in a shed known as the purging
    house, where molasses are siphoned off to make
    rum and treacle.
  • Remainder of the mixture is left to crystallise
    into sugar loaves, which usually takes about 2
    months.
  • Sugar loaves separated into white sugar and
    muscavado and exported.

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14
  • Stuart Schwartz Sugar production was a peculiar
    activity because it combined an intensive
    agriculture with a highly technical,
    semi-industrial mechanical process. The need to
    process sugar cane in the field meant that each
    engenho was both a factory and a farm demanding
    not only a large agricultural labour force for
    the planting and harvesting of the cane, but also
    an army of skilled blacksmiths, carpenters,
    masons and technicians who understood the
    intricacies and mysteries of the sugar-making
    process .

15
Brazil
  • Sugar cultivated in north- eastern states of
    Pernambuco and Bahia.
  • Needed good soil, reliable rainfall and good
    access to sea ports.
  • Consequently, early settlement in Brazil
    concentrated on the coast.

16
  • Portuguese initially enlist local Indians to work
    in the sugar plantations.
  • Death of many Indians from old-world diseases
    like smallpox, and Catholic Churchs disapproval
    for Indian enslavement, cause a shift to African
    workers from the 1570s onwards.
  • Africans generally considered to be better
    labourers than Indians.
  • Huge numbers of slaves imported to work the sugar
    plantations.

17
  • Slaves perform a variety of tasks on the sugar
    engenho.
  • Most slaves are field slaves.
  • Some slaves work in the mill, doing more skilled
    jobs.
  • Other slaves work as artisans or domestic
    servants.

18
Jean Baptiste Debret Dinner in Brazil (19th C)
19
  • Slaves treated differently according to racial
    origins.
  • Ladino slaves (slaves acculturated to Brazilian
    life or born in the country) favoured over boçal
    slaves slaves born in Africa.
  • Mulattoes usually privileged over pure-blooded
    Africans and more likely to occupy relatively
    skilled positions.

20
  • Bad conditions on plantations.
  • Malnutrition, poor clothing, substandard
    accommodation.
  • Dangerous work. Edward Littleton (1689) If a
    boiler gets any part of his body into the
    scalding sugar, it sticks like glue or birdlime
    and tis hard to save either life or limb.
  • Excessive work 9-month-long safra (harvest).
  • High mortality.
  • Schwarz Throughout the 17th century, a slave
    could produce enough sugar to cover his original
    cost in between 13 and 16 months, and, even after
    the steep rise in slave prices after 1700,
    replacement value could be earned in 30 months.

21
Cruel Punishments
22
Escape from Slavery
  • Manumission.
  • Suicide.
  • Abortion.
  • Rebellion.
  • Running away to form separate slave communities
    quilombos (Brazil) or palenques (Cuba).

23
  • Brazilian sugar industry declines in mid-17th
    century.
  • Dutch invasion damages engenhos.
  • Portuguese government increases taxes.
  • Slaves diverted to mine gold in Minas Gerais.

24
The Caribbean
  • Sugar production shifts to Saint Domingue,
    Barbados and Jamaica.
  • More than 250,000 slaves imported to Barbados in
    18th century.

25
  • Richard Dunn In the pre-industrial world of the
    17th century, the Caribbean planter was a
    large-scale entrepreneur. He was a combination
    farmer-manufacturer. With a workforce of 100
    labourers he could plant 80 acres in cane and
    expect to produce 80 tons of sugar per year. He
    had to feed, clothe, house and supervise his
    labour force year round. He needed 1 or 2 mills
    to extract juice from the harvested cane, a
    boiling house to clarify and evaporate the cane
    juice into sugar crystals, a curing house for
    drying the sugar and draining out the molasses, a
    distillery for converting the molasses into rum,
    and a storehouse in the nearest port for keeping
    his barrelled sugar until it could be shipped to
    England. An operation of this size required a
    capital investment of thousands of pounds.

26
Cuba
  • Spanish colonies of Cuba, and to a lesser extent
    Puerto Rico, supplant Barbados, Jamaica and Haiti
    as the main suppliers of sugar in the 19th
    century.
  • Slavery persists on these islands until 1884.
  • Technological innovations make life harder rather
    than easier for slaves.

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30
Why Slavery?
  • Whites regarded manual labour as degrading.
  • Sugar requires intensive and gruelling labour
    during the safra.
  • Economies of scale planters need to have access
    to an engenho in which to process their sugar.
    Firewood and labour expensive, so hard for small
    producers to compete.

31
Consumption
  • Sugar first introduced into Europe in the 11th
    century. Originally seen as a spice.
  • Very rare and expensive throughout the Medieval
    period, and therefore confined largely to royalty
    and the upper nobility.
  • Functioned as a preservative and a sweetener.
    Often made into decorative sculptures called
    subtleties.
  • Also prescribed as a medicine during the Black
    Death.

32
  • Sugar more widely used from mid-17th century.
    Added to coffee, chocolate and tea. Also used in
    puddings, such as custard, pastries and creams.
  • Sugar becomes accessible to the working classes
    in the 19th century, and is used extensively in
    drinks and desserts. A major component of the
    modern diet.

33
Sugar and Abolition
  • 1790s abolitionists in Britain campaign against
    slavery and urge Britons to boycott
    slave-produced sugar.
  • Anti-slavery pamphlet If sugar were not
    consumed it would not be imported reasoned the
    pamphlet if it were not imported, it would not
    be cultivated if it were not cultivated there
    would be an end to the slave trade, so that the
    consumer of sugar is really the prime mover, the
    grand cause of all the horrible injustice which
    attends the capture, of all the shocking cruelty
    which accompanies the treatment of the wretched
    African slave.

34
  • Graphic connections made between sugar and
    slavery.
  • French writer declares that he cannot look upon
    a piece of sugar without conceiving it stained
    with spots of human blood.
  • British politician William Fox alleges that in
    every pound of sugar usedwe may be considered as
    consuming 2 ounces of human flesh.
  • Rumours circulate that dead slaves are actually
    placed in sugar casks to enhance the flavour of
    the product.

35
  • C. 300,000 people abstain from sugar in the 1790s
    as a result of the abolitionist campaign.
  • Some go without sugar altogether.
  • Others convert to sugar grown in the East Indies,
    where slave labour is not used.

36
  • Some Critics mock anti-saccharites for
    depriving British workers of cheap sugar.
  • William Gillray Barbarities in the West Indies.

37
  • Slave trade abolished 1807, but slavery persists
    until 1834 in British colonies.
  • Further boycotts in 1820s.
  • Women important.

38
  • Post 1834, abolitionists campaign against
    continuation of slavery in non-British countries.
  • The Free Produce Association emerges in the
    mid-19th century to promote the consumption of
    sugar cultivated by free labourers.
  • Attempt to reconcile workers need for cheap
    sugar with ethical forms of production.
  • Lord Brougham (1864) The poor man should have
    plenty of sugar, cheap sugar, and sugar of the
    most exquisite quality too, but it must be
    lawfully and honestly come by, and above all, he
    must not have slave-made or slave-supplied sugar,
    which he must know is crimson with the blood if
    the African.
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