Sugar & Slavery

The Economics of the European Sugar Industry Drove the Brutal Practice of Slavery in the Caribbean

A Global Industry - Slave Labor Produces Sugar & Wealth

Beginning in the seventeenth century, the Europeans built the sugar industry in the Caribbean by combining productive resources from around the Atlantic to produce sugar for European consumption. This system was a global industry that used people from one part of the world to produce a good in another part of the world for sale in a third part of the world.

The Caribbean, with year-round tropical weather, was an ideal location for growing sugar. European investment built sugar plantations on Caribbean islands - building a plantation cost between £4,000 to £40,000 (a value of $800,000 to $8 million in 2019 dollars). The Europeans then imported more than 4 million African slaves to work growing sugar in the Caribbean. The growing numbers of African slaves imported to the European Caribbean resulted in large increases in sugar production. As a result, Europeans were able to greatly increase their consumption of sugar. Europeans benefited from the industry in two ways. First, sugar plantations were very profitable, earning about 10% a year. The trans-Atlantic trade created by this industry enriched the coastal cities of Britain and France. The African bore the cost of the system that enslaved them and literally worked them to death.

The European sugar industry was the driving force in the triangular trade-route that connected Europe, Africa and the Americas. The Caribbean islands specialized in producing sugar and needed to import everything else, from food and tools to clothing and luxury goods. In this way, the Caribbean sugar industry was an early example of the modern global economy based on specialized production in specific goods and trade for all other goods.

The Factory System of Caribbean Sugar Plantations

Producing sugar in the Caribbean was year round process that was more similar to an industrial factory than it was to a traditional farming system based on specific farming seasons. The combination of year-round tropical weather and the short time-frame in which sugar cane can be processed into sugar meant that each plantation was complete economic unit comprised of large amounts of land for growing sugar cane and a mill and boiling house to turn the sugar juice into sugar. Sugar plantations staggered the planting and harvesting of sugar cane fields so that there were always crops to be planted and harvested. This meant that African slaves were constantly working on planting, harvesting and making sugar. This process made the Caribbean sugar industry very productive and profitable for its European owners.

High Death Rate of African Slaves on Sugar Plantations

The sugar industry in the Caribbean was extremely brutal and resulted in a high death rate for the Africans slaves forced to work on the sugar plantations. Historian Richard Dunn described the terrible treatment of African slaves by saying that European plantation owners treated the African slaves like "disposable cogs in a machine" who could be worked to death and were easily replaced.

African slaves suffered a high death rate because they were forced to work long hours, were badly fed and suffered violent abuse. On average 3% of African slaves died each year - although it was as high as 10% on some islands. The death rate for newly imported slaves generally ranged from 20 - 30%. In addition, because fewer African women slaves were imported, along with the brutal conditions they were subjected to, there were not many children born on sugar plantations. In general, the number of deaths were much higher than the number of births. This was documented by historian Richard Dunn in a study of eighty years of a single sugar plantation in Jamaica in which there were 420 births and 751 deaths. The sugar industry needed to continually import more slaves to the Caribbean to simply maintain the population of slaves.

Statistics from Barbados show that sugar plantations needed to continually import African slaves in order to simply maintain the population of slaves working in the sugar industry. In the absence of importation of slaves, the slave population would have significantly decreased. A comparison of the total number of Africans slaves imported to Caribbean islands to the slave population on the islands at the time of emancipation demonstrates that high mortality rate of African slaves existed across the region.

The brutality of slavery in the Caribbean can be shown by comparing the population of African slaves in the Caribbean to the African slave population in the United States. In 1825, United States and the Caribbean islands each had a population of about 2 million slaves. The fact that there had been more than 3.5 million African slaves imported to the Caribbean and only 375,000 to North America is an indication of the terrible life of Africans laboring in slavery in the Caribbean.

Slave Revolts - African Slaves Rebel Against the Sugar Industry

Slave Revolts were a common occurrence in the Caribbean. There were at least sixty-six slave revolts in the Caribbean that involved more than 100 slaves. All of these revolts were larger than the major slave revolts in the United States. For example, the 1791 Stono Rebellion involved less than 100 slaves and the 1831 Nat Turner Rebellion involved about 70 slaves.

In the Caribbean, there were fifteen rebellions that involved more than 1000 slaves. While these rebellions spanned the history of slavery in the Caribbean, six of these rebellions happened on French islands and were inspired by the French Revolution in 1789.

These larger rebellions generally happened for three reasons:

First, the constant importation of slaves meant whole tribes would be sent to single islands. On smaller islands, like St. John, these groups of slaves were able to maintain their tribal structure and used it organize rebellions against Europeans. These rebellions were not successful in the long run and suppressed by European military forces.

Second, large groups of Maroons, slaves who had escaped plantations and established their own communities on remote parts of larger islands, like Jamaica, would fight the Europeans to maintain their freedom and independence. These rebellions were often resolved through treaties in which Europeans would allow the Maroon communities to exist as long as the maroons would help in suppressing slave rebellions.

Third, social and economic conflicts between poor whites and freed African slaves on the islands would become violent and the freed slaves would rally the slaves to their cause. This was the case with the 1791 rebellion on Saint-Domingue. In the case of Saint-Dominque, this rebellion resulted in freedom for the slaves and the creation of Haiti as an independent country.

The Slow Process of the Abolition of Slavery in the Caribbean

The abolition of slavery in the Caribbean was slow process that took almost a century and was caused by events in Europe, the Caribbean and global sugar economy.

The ending of slavery on Saint Domingue in 1794 was caused by the French Revolution in 1789. The ideas of the French Revolution resulted in the 1791 revolution on Saint Domingue against the French colonial government and the establishment of the country of Haiti.

In Britain, the abolitionist movement succeeded in having parliament prohibit the slave trade in the British Empire in 1807. After this, the British navy acted to stop the trans-Atlantic slave trade. However, slavery continued in the Caribbean. The British government finally passed the Abolition Act in 1833 after Baptist Rebellion in Jamaica in 1831 that involved more than 60,000 slaves and caused the destruction of 200 sugar plantations. This law gradually freed the slaves on British islands over the course of a decade and compensated the owners for their financial loss (£20 per slave).

France abolished slavery following the Revolution of 1848 that established the Second Republic. A combination of slave revolts and the declining profitability of the sugar industry, due to increased global sugar production in the Pacific region and the growth of beet sugar production Europe, resulted in the ending of slavery in the Netherlands and Spanish Empire.