Week 2: Blood Sugar

           The world as a whole was not a stranger to the nature of slavery and as such it is not a surprising turn for the Atlantic World to eventually grab hold of the oldest form of free labor. As John Elliot pointed out, the makeup of slavery within the Old World consisted more of serfdom and indentured servitude than that of the involuntary migration of individuals[1]. However, the nature of the New World demanded a more easily accessible form of labor which could be easily replaced when needed.

            The cane sugar plantation is but one form of the New World demands for cheap slave labor, but it is significant in the fact that once a slave landed within the world of sugar, his/her lifespan was significantly shortened. As the demand for sugar began to expand, so did the need for more slaves, not just to fill the work load needed but to replace those who died due to the nature of the work[2]. The involuntary migration of Africans exploded in the cane sugar producing regions of the New World, mainly the Caribbean. David Richardson wrote, in reference to the sugar-producing regions, that “As the total slave population in the Americas grew, this replacement demand for slaves came to constitute a substantial part of the total demand for new slaves in the colonies”[3]. In other words, as the slave population grew so did the need for replacement slaves[4]; and with that demand, traders emerged ready to negotiate prices and produce slave labor[5].  

The Atlantic slave trade was but a trickle before the demand for cane sugar in the Old World opened the flood gates. Compared to the slave trade within the mainland of the Americas, the sugar demand and the dangerous nature in which it was produced propelled the use of involuntary immigrants to such an extent that the need for a supply of fresh bodies was continuous. The mainland slaves were able to reproduce and supply the New World with a readily available supply of slave labor, the slaves of the Caribbean sugar plantations were not so lucky[6].

 Cane sugar, a small yet powerful piece of history that changed lives, moved nations, and initiated the greatest international trafficking in people that has yet to be matched. At its core, economies are all the same. The public creates a need, and the market, with all of its various players, fills that need. The world’s growing and insatiable desire for sugar was the catalyst for the creation of the slave-based sugar plantations that could provide in ways that slave-free markets could not. As today we have blood diamonds, the Atlantic World had blood sugar; a common, and otherwise innocuous, consumer product built on forced labor.

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[1] Elliot, John H. "Chapter 4: Exploiting American Resources" Empires of the Atlantic World: Britain And Spain in America 1492-1830. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2006. 88-114. Print. Pg 103.

[2] Richardson, David. “Legal Structures, Economics, and the Movement of Coerced Peoples in the Atlantic World”. Chapter 22. Cambridge Histories Online. Cambridge University Press. 2011. Pg 580.

[3] Richardson, 580

[4] Richardson, 577

[5] Curtin, Philip D. “The rise and fall of the plantation complex: essays in Atlantic history”. Cambridge University Press, 1998.  Pg 125.

[6] Richardson, 580-581