Sugar In The Caribbean

Their lives were short and they were expected to live from five to six years, which was considered a large profit to the slave owners, as they were able to purchase new and healthier slaves with no financial loss. They were also heavily mistreated; being forced to work for hours under the scorching sun, with terrible living conditions and poor nutrition. Slaves were seen as barely human, and the loss of one only meant the loss of the slave owner’s financial gain. Sugar was produced by the masses, but it cost thousands of human lives. Overall, although both colonies benefited and profited from slavery, the numbers and the demand in Meso-America greatly surpassed those from North America’s, and resulted in slave trade being banned much later in those

One cause-and-effect arguments Nash makes about slavery's development is as the need for labor increased because of agricultural development, the need for slaves also increased. Expansion of slave trade was caused by the high demand for cash crops like tobacco and sugar. American colonies were in need of a cheap labor force and saw Africans as fit for the job since there were so many of them. Indentured servitude was just not working for the colonies because of the intense work needed to be done to farm cash crops. Another cause and effect argument Nash uses is that the English entry into the slave trade business allowed southern plantation owners to buy slaves more and for cheaper than ever before.

Because European explorers brought along their native diseases (such as smallpox and tuberculosis), the native population was soon dramatically diminished. This meant that Caribbean plantation owners had to import in African slaves. This rejuvenated the African slave trade, which became an essential part of the global economy. Russian serfdom, however,

Runaway slaves were very common, slaves killing slave masters; and slavery as an established legitimate institution was cracking at its base. White people realized that most black people and mulattoes would prefer to return to their African motherland than to live in servitude. Thus in 1821 the American Colonization Society bought a large piece of land (43,000 sq. miles, almost half the entire new country) in the west coast of Africa "Cape Mesurado".

Though 1800 and 1860 the African American population moved throughout the country to new established lands in the south and southwest areas for a few major factors. The change in the countries cash crop drove the slave market to new areas of the country. The crops effected the economy within the Chesapeake area so a new source of revenue was established. The new revenue came about with the need of slaves to work the new areas so the domestic slave trade was born. The slave trade contributed to about 1 million slaves being migrated around the

Slavery in Haiti during the late eighteenth, and early nineteenth century was a very contentious issue. The sugar farms in Haiti accounted for much of the French economy, and slaves were necessary to farm sugar at the rate that they did. Haiti alone had 800,000 slaves, which was good for most in the world. Additionally, the sugar plantations had dangerous working conditions, and a high death rate. Toussaint L’Ouverture was born a slave on one of the plantations and given an education, something that most slaves did not get.

Before the European settlers arrived in America even the Native Americans had their own slaves. Slavery was a very argumentative issue in America and, in fact, was the root cause of both the Haitian revolution and the American Civil War. The importation of slaves to Europe began when the Portuguese Crown gave up its monopoly of the slave trade in Europe leading to private ownership of slaves. This caused the European settlers, especially the Portuguese, to bring more slaves to the Americas directly from Africa. The Spanish were the first to use African slaves in the New World on islands such as Cuba and Hispaniola with the first African slaves arriving in Hispaniola in 1501.

The need for labour sprang from the inherent demographic difference between the Americas and South Asia, from the impact of European expansion and from the specific labor tasks that the colonists required. The Atlantic slave trade paid much attention to the role of the slave trade in British North America and West Indian colonies. According to Kenneth Morgan (2007: 18) “the transatlantic slave trade was an important business enterprise within the British Empire for nearly a century and a half, from the restoration of the Stuart monarchy in 1660 until the trade was abolished in 1807”. In this period the slave trade and its capital turnover made a substantial contribution to the economic development of the British Empire.

The cotton gin was a simple machine with the sole purpose of separating cotton fibres from it’s seeds, drastically lowering the production costs of cotton. Previously workers were required to separate cotton fibres from it's seeds by hand, a process that required multiple hours to produce a single pound of fibres. Using the cotton gin however slaves could produce more than 50 pounds of cotton, in a single day. The vastly expensive cotton prices decreased simultaneously, leading to a growth in popularity of cotton clothing. This lead to South American farmers devoting more time and land to cotton plantations.

Problems in the nature of these, didn’t just go away, they took effort and time. Speaking of time, which was very limited during the revolution, many resources were wasted which made it very hard for the Haitians to survive. The lives of slaves were hugely impacted after the revolution as slavery was abolished entirely in the nation. Haiti was the second country in the whole world to be freed from a European power

Sharecropping was a system that eventually evolved to include white workers and allowed the workers to work for a plantation owner in exchange for a portion(usually one-half) of the overall crop. Initially, sharecropping was seen as a higher status than working under a contract because is made the freedmen feel like it was a step towards owning property. Unfortunately, sharecropping was not as beneficial to the freedmen as it appeared. It often left the freedmen with debt at the end of the season and held them in the contract until they could pay it

The high demand for sugar was increasing more and more every day. Between 1700 and 1770, the amount of sugar produced and consumed quadrupled. Sugar is often added into other imports, such as tea, coffee and chocolate. These three things have something in common that is a big factor in the demand for sugar. They are all stimulants.

Document 1 shows the year of emancipation in various countries in the Americas and Muslim world; it can be seen that most of the American countries emancipated slavery about a century before most of the Muslim countries did so. As most of the countries eventually emancipated slavery because of internal pressures from the public, it can be deduced that the American countries had greater public pressure on slavery earlier on than did the Muslim countries. This could be because of the difference in treatment of slaves where slaves in the Americans were treated significantly more harshly than their counterparts in the Muslim world. Document 4 is a table showing the usage of slaves in Cuba in 1825 and it can be seen that the majority was used for rural farming while the minority was used for urban occupations. This is opposite to slave use in the Muslim world, where the majority was used for urban work and the minority was used in the rural fields.

In American Colonies, Alan Taylor argues that “the sugar boom revolutionized the economy, landscape, demography and social structure of Barbados.” (p.210). Sugar became very important for everyone who grew it, especially in Barbados. By 1660, Barbados made the most sugar consumed by England. This made “more trade and capital than all other English colonies combined.”

When it comes to the topic of sugar most of us would agree that it impacted the world. Where this agreement ends ,however, is on the question of whether good or bad. Whereas some are convinced that it was a negative change, others maintain that it was a positive change. However sugar affected the world in a negative way by causing slavery, poor work condition, inequality, and low wages.