By the end of the 15th century, the plantation owners knew they were on to a good thing, but their number one problem was labour. UN Photo/Manuel Elias, Caption: Detail from the "Ark of Return", the permanent memorial honouring the victims of slavery and the transatlantic slave trade, located at UN Headquarters in New York. Part of a feature about the archaeology of slavery on St Kitts and Nevis in the Caribbean, from the International Slavery Museum's website. Cite This Work Sugar plantations in Brazil were dominated by African slavery by the mid-16th century. The Sinking of the Central America, Wong Hands residence and travel documents. However, as this village may have been associated with the garrison of the fort it may not have been typicalof villages at sugar plantations. Another major risk to the sugar planters was rebellions by the slaves. The Slave Code went viral across the Caribbean, and ultimately became the model applied to slavery in the North American English colonies that would become the United States. Once they arrived in the Caribbean islands, the Africans were prepared for sale. We would much rather spend this money on producing more free history content for the world. slaves on the growing sugar plantations during the 1650s.4 To be sure, . They typically lived in family units in rudimentary villages on the plantations where their freedom of movement was severely restricted. 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. ST GEORGE'S, Grenada, CMC - Surviving relatives of a family in the United Kingdom who in the 18th and 19th centuries jointly owned approximately 1,200 slaves on six plantations in Grenada on Monday apologised for the actions of their forefathers. As the historian M. Newitt notes, Here [So Tom and Principe] the plantation system, dependent on slave labour, was developed and a monoculture established, which made it necessary for the settlers to import everything they needed, including food. Making money from Caribbean sugar plantations was not easy, and men like Simon Taylor had to face many risks. The slave houses of the 18th century show a close resemblance to the late 19th century wooden houses with thatched roofs that appear in the earliest photographs of rural houses in St Kitts. Most people are familiar with slavery in the antebellum US South. 2. A water mill was in lower right with a cane field in the center. 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. Archaeology can reveal their tools and domestic vessels and utensils, such as ceramic pots. Sometimes land had to be terraced, although not usually in Brazil. So, between 1748 and 1788 over 1,200 ships brought over 335,000 enslaved Africans to Jamaica, Britain's largest sugar-producing colony. Together they laid the foundation for a twenty-first century global contribution to political reform with a democratic sensibility. Slaves were permitted at weekends to grow food for their own sustenance on small plots of land. 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. At nine or ten feet high, they towered above the workers, who used sharp, double-edged knives to cut the stalks. This necessity was sometimes a problem in tropical climates. The idea was first tested following the Portuguese colonization of Madeira in 1420. Books . In the year 1706 there was a severe drought which caused most food crops to fail. In Jamaica too some planters improved slave housing at this time, reorganising the villages into regularly planned layouts, and building stone or shingled houses for their workforce. In recent years, a third source of information, archaeology, has begun to contribute to our understanding. 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. Cartwright, M. (2021, July 06). London: Heinemann, 1967. At the top of plantation slave communities in the sugar colonies of the Caribbean were skilled men, trained up at the behest of white managers to become sugar boilers, blacksmiths, carpenters, coopers, masons and drivers. The Drax family pioneered the plantation system in the 17th century and played a major role in the development of sugar and slavery across the Caribbean and the US. On Portuguese plantations, perhaps one in three slaves were women, but the Dutch and English plantation owners preferred a male-only workforce when possible. Plantations, Sugar Cane and Slavery on JSTOR are two . Plantations were farms growing only crops that Europe wanted: tobacco, sugar, cotton. Many plantation owners preferred to import new slaves rather than providing the means and conditions for the survival of their existing slaves. The Caribbean Sugar mill with vertical rollers, French West Indies, 1665. 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 . The plan of the 18th century slave village at Jessups is a good example of this kind of layout. Footnote 65 Through their work planning slave trading voyages and corresponding with RAC employees in West Africa and the Caribbean, serving on the directorate of the RAC would have provided these merchants with useful business contacts and knowledge pertaining to West African commerce, the Caribbean sugar trade, and plantation management. And in every sugar parish, black people outnumbered whites. Another slave village stands beside a fenced compound, connected with the fort. Those engaged in the slave trade were primarily driven by the huge profits to be gained, both in the Caribbean and at home. In part the Act was a response to the increasingly powerful arguments of abolitionists. The Portuguese Crown parcelled out land or captaincies (donatarias) to noble settlers, much like they did in the feudal system of Europe. Sugar of lesser quality with a brownish colour tended to be consumed locally or was only used to make preserves and crystallised fruit. The plantation owner distributed to his slaves North American corn, salted herrings and beef, while horse beans and biscuit bread were sent from England on occasion. They had their own gardens in which they grew yams, maize and other food, and were allowed to keep chickens to provide eggs for their children. Slave villages represent an important but little-known part of the Caribbean landscape. The Caribbean is home to the Haitian Revolution, which produced the worlds first black freedom state and the subsequent proliferation of constitutional democracies. Huts like this needed constant maintenance and frequent replacement. https://www.worldhistory.org/article/1795/life-on-a-colonial-sugar-plantation/. From the 1650's to the 1670's, slaves were brought to work the fields of sugar plantations. In 1820-21 James Hakewill drew a number of sugar plantations in Jamaica showing the slave villages in several cases set within wooded areas, which served not only as shade but also as fruit trees to provide food for the enslaved populations. Often parents were separated from children, and husbands from wives. A slave plantation was an agricultural farm that used enslaved people for labour. 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? Disease and death were common outcomes in this human tragedy. These were some of the most skilled laborers, doing some of the . Europeans introduced sugarcane to the New World in the 1490s. Most Caribbean islands were covered with sugar cane fields and mills for refining the crop. Mark is a full-time author, researcher, historian, and editor. The German noble Heinrich von Uchteritz who was captured in battle in England and sold to a planter in Barbados in 1652 described houses of the enslaved Africans on the island. A problem for all male slaves was the fact that there were far more of them than females brought from Africa. On the Caribbean island of the Dominican Republic, tourists flock to pristine beaches, with little knowledge that a few miles away thousands of dispossessed Haitians are under armed guard, a form of slavery on plantations harvesting sugarcane, most of which ends up in US kitchens. As a consequence of these events, the size of the Black population in the Caribbean rose dramatically in the latter part of the 17th century. Capitalism and black slavery were intertwined. Archaeology is often the only way to recover detailed information on the possessions of the enslaved workers, since the items were rarely recorded in documents. The sugar plantations of the region, owned and operated primarily by English, French, Dutch, Spanish and Danish colonists, consumed black life as quickly as it was imported. 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. Capitalism and black slavery were intertwined. At the heart of the plantation system was the labor of millions of enslaved workers, transplanted across the Atlantic like the sugar they produced. They are small low rectangular, one room structures, under roofs thatched with leaves. Several descriptions survive from the island of Barbados. By 1750, British and French plantations produced most of the worlds sugar and its byproducts, molasses and rum. Once at the plantation, their treatment depended on the plantation owner who had paid to have them transported or bought the slaves at auction locally. Long before the islands became part of the United States in 1917, the islands, in particular the island of Saint Croix, was exploited by the Danish from the early 18th century and by 1800 over 30,000 acres were under cultivation, earning . In the mid-18th century Reverend William Smith described a similar scene when characterising the location of the slave villages on Nevis; They live in Huts, on the Western Side of our Dwelling-Houses, so that every Plantation resembles a small Town. Colonialism has persisted for over a century after the ending of formal slavery, leaving black communities to deal with economic despair and the emerging political class to clean up the inherited colonial disarray. Revd Smith observed. This portal is managed by the United Nations Information Centre for the Caribbean Area. The slaves of the Athenian Laurium silver mines or the Cuban sugar plantations, for example, lived in largely male societies. Resistance to the oppression of slavery and ethnic colonialism has made the Caribbean a principal site of freedom politics and democratic desire. Furnishings within were always sparse and crude, most occupants sleeping in hammocks, or on the earth floor.. Finally, states imposed taxes on sugar. . The real problem was the process of producing sugar. Of this number, about 17 percent came to the British Caribbean. The sugar that saturates the American diet has a barbaric history as the 'white gold' that fueled slavery. The Caribbean is home to some of the most economically and socially exploited people of modernity. The slaves working the sugar plantation were caught in an unceasing rhythm of arduous labor . 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. Sugar production in the United States Virgin Islands was an important part of the economy of the United States Virgin Islands for over two hundred years. 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. The plantation owners provided their enslaved Africans with weekly rations of salt herrings or mackerel, sweet potatoes, and maize, and sometimes salted West Indian turtle. Over one million Indian indentured workers went to sugar plantations from 1835 to 1917, 450,000 to Mauritius, 150, 000 to East Africa and Natal, and 450,000 to South America and 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. The legislators proceeded to define Africans as non-humana form of property to be owned by purchasers and their heirs forever. ", 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. The team, Jon Brett and Rob Philpott, with colleagues Lorraine Darton and Eleanor Leech, surveyed a number of sugar plantations in the parishes of St Mary Cayon and Christ Church Nichola Town. This book covers the changing preference of growing sugar rather than tobacco which had been the leading crop in the trans-Atlantic colonies. Web. 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. The voyage to Rio was one of the longest and took 60 days. Originally published by National Museums Liverpool to the public domain. After emancipation the actions of many British Caribbean sugar plantation workers created conditions that led to new relations with former masters, separate communities away from the plantations for themselves, and renewed migration from Africa. Raising sugar cane could be a very profitable business, but producing refined sugar was a highly labour-intensive process. A roof of plantain-leaves with a few rough boards, nailed to the coarse pillars which support it, form the whole building.. To save transportation costs, plantations were located as near as possible to a port or major water route. Slaves on an Antiguan Sugar PlantationThomas Hearne (CC BY-NC-SA). As the historian A. R. Disney notes, "sugar production was one of the most complex and technologically-sophisticated agricultural industries of early modern times" (236). This latter group included those who lived in towns and not on their plantations, nobles who never even visited the colony, and religious institutions. First they had to survive the appalling conditions on the voyage from West Africa, known as theMiddle Passage. But the forced workers engaged in rice cultivation were given tasks and could regulate their own pace of work better than slaves on sugar plantations. The itineraries of seafaring vessels sometimes offered runaway slaves a means to leave colonial bondage. The location of the provision grounds at the Jessups estate, one of the Nevis plantations studied by the St Kitts-Nevis Digital Archaeology Initiative, is shown on a 1755 plan of the plantation. The Caribbean is home to the Haitian Revolution, which produced the worlds first black freedom state and the subsequent proliferation of constitutional democracies. However, possible platforms where houses may have stood have been observed at Ottleys and the Hermitage within the areas shown on the McMahon map as slave villages in 1828. Images of Caribbean Slavery (Coconut Beach, Florida: Caribbean Studies Press, 2016). Last modified July 06, 2021. Thank you! . A series of watercolour paintings by Lieutenant Lees, dated to the 1780s are one exception. This voyage, now known as the Middle Passage, consumed some 20 per cent of its human cargo. New slaves were constantly brought in . On Portuguese plantations, perhaps one in three slaves were. Presenting evidence of past wrongs now facilitates the call for a new global order that includes fairness in access and equality in participation. Up to two-thirds of these slaves were bound for sugar cane plantations in the Caribbean, Mexico, and Brazil to produce "White Gold." Over the course of the 380 years of the Atlantic slave trade, millions of Africans were enslaved to satisfy the world's sweet tooth. 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. Some 40 per cent of enslaved Africans were shipped to the Caribbean Islands, which, in the seventeenth century, surpassed Portuguese Brazil as the principal market for enslaved labour. Inside the plantation works, the conditions were often worse, especially the heat of the boiling house. With profits at only around 10-15% for sugar plantation owners, most, however, would have lived more modest lives and only the owners of very large or multiple estates lived a life of luxury. The sugar cane industry was a labour-intensive one, both in terms of skilled and unskilled work. Popular and grass-roots activism have created a legacy of opposition to racism and ethnic dominance. The houses measured 15 to 20 feet long and had two rooms. Raymond's book, which is an essential source for any study of . Slaves had to learn the local pidgin such as creole Portuguese in Brazil. (61), Colonial Sugar Cane ManufacturingUnknown Artist (Public Domain). However, it was in Brazil and the Caribbean that demand for African slaves took off in spectacular fashion. The UNChronicleisnot an official record. Sugar from Madeira was exported to Portugal, to merchants in Flanders, to Italy, England, France, Greece, and even Constantinople. Bibliography Brazil was by far the largest importer of slaves in the Americas throughout the 17th century. Institutional racism continues to be a critical force explaining the persistence of white economic dominance. The Atlantic economy, in every aspect, was effectively sustained by African enslavement. 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. Enter your email address to receive notifications of new posts by email. Current forms of slavery and extreme social oppression are now identified more clearly and treated with similar public and policy opposition as traditional forms. Sugar and Slavery. In the hot Caribbean climate, it took about a year for sugar canes to ripen. For this reason, European colonial settlers in Africa and the Americas used slaves on their plantations, almost all of whom came from Africa. TRANS-ATLANTIC SLAVE VOYAGES. In addition to using the produce to supplement their own diet, slaves sold or exchanged it, as well as livestock such as chickens or pigs, in local markets. Brewminate uses Infolinks and is an Amazon Associate with links to items available there. What was the role of the . Those with the skills to operate and maintain the machinery in sugar mills were much in demand, especially their chief supervisor, the sugar master, who enjoyed a high salary. Brewminate: A Bold Blend of News and Ideas. 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. It is for this and related reasons that the Caribbean has emerged as an epicenter of the global reparatory justice movement. 1995 "Slave life on Caribbean sugar plantations: Some unanswered questions," in Palmi, Stephan, ed., Slave Cultures and the Cultures of Slavery. Proceedings of the Fifth . 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. A mill plant needed anywhere from 60 to 200 workers to operate it. As a result housing for the enslaved workers was improved towards the end of the 18th century. [Charles de Rochefort, Histoire naturelle et morale des iles Antilles de l'Amrique (Rotterdam, 1681), p. 332] Rural settlement and houses, Cuba, 1853. The enslaved labourers could also purchase goods in the market place, through the sale of livestock, produce from their provision grounds or gardens, or craft items they had manufactured. Slaveholders encouraged complex social hierarchies on the plantations that amounted to something like a system of 'class'.