Sugar and Slavery

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Sugar and Slavery
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• 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?

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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.

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• 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.

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• 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.

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• 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.

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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.

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• 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.

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

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• 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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• 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 .

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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.

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• 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.

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• 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.

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Jean Baptiste Debret Dinner in Brazil (19th C)
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• 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.

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• 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.

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Cruel Punishments
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Escape from Slavery

• Manumission.
• Suicide.
• Abortion.
• Rebellion.
• Running away to form separate slave communities
  quilombos (Brazil) or palenques (Cuba).

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

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The Caribbean

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

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• 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.

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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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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.

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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.

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• 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.

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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.

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• 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.

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• 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.

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

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

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• 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.