By the mid-16th century, African slavery predominated on the sugar plantations of Brazil, although the enslavement of the indigenous people continued well into the 17th century. Life on a Colonial Sugar Plantation. In the American South, only one . Revolts on slave ships cascaded into rebellions on plantations and in towns. John Pinney (1740-1818) who owned the plantation of Mountravers on Nevis gives two reasons for this layout. 1674: Antigua's first sugar plantation is established with the arrival of Barbadian-born British soldier, plantation and slave-owner Christopher Codrington Within just four years, half the island . This necessity was sometimes a problem in tropical climates. 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. The introduction of sugar cultivation to St Kitts in the 1640s and its subsequent rapid growth led to the development of the plantation economy which depended on the labour of imported enslaved Africans. Disease and death were common outcomes in this human tragedy. plantation life with slavery included was a mainstay since the start of the United States, up until the Civil War. Madeira, a group of unpopulated volcanic islands in the North Atlantic, had rich soil and a beneficial climate for growing sugar cane all year round. Before the slave trade ended, the Caribbean had taken approximately 47 percent of the 10 million African slaves brought to the Americas. 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. 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. Boyd was the son of a wealthy London slave trader, Edward Boyd, whose business shipped several thousand enslaved people to sugar plantations in the Caribbean and fought against the abolition of . The lack of nutrition, hard working conditions, and regular beatings and whippings meant that the life expectancy of slaves was very low, and the annual mortality rate on plantations was at least 5%. The sugar cane plant was the main crop produced on the numerous plantations throughout the Caribbean through the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries, as almost every island was covered with sugar plantations and mills for refining the cane for its sweet properties. Eliminating the toxic contaminant of hierarchical ethnic racism from all societies, and allowing them to embrace a horizontal perspective on ethnic and cultural diversity and ways of living, will enable the twenty-first century to be better than any prior period in modernity. They are close to the animal enclosures, so the labourers could keep watch over the livestock, and set below the plantation house which stands on a small hill. Many plantation owners preferred to import new slaves rather than providing the means and conditions for the survival of their existing slaves. "Life on a Colonial Sugar Plantation." One hut is cut away to reveal the inside. It is privileged to host senior United Nations officials as well as distinguished contributors from outside the United Nations system whose views are not necessarily those of the United Nations. The same system was adopted by other colonial powers, notably in the Caribbean. Institutional racism continues to be a critical force explaining the persistence of white economic dominance. 2. Here they were given a number of basic lessons in Portuguese and Christianity, both of which made them more valuable if they survived the voyage to the Americas. Presenting evidence of past wrongs now facilitates the call for a new global order that includes fairness in access and equality in participation. A watchtower was a feature of many plantations to ensure work schedules and rates were kept and to guard against external attacks. Learn about employment opportunities across the UN in the Caribbean. Jamaica has been by far the major producer of sugar, but The Lesser Antilles had the advantage of a shorter sea trip to deliver produce and rum to the . 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. Over the period of the Atlantic Slave Trade, from approximately 1526 to 1867, some 12.5 million captured men, women, and children were put on ships in Africa, and 10.7 million arrived in the Americas. In the 15th century, it was the Portuguese who first adapted a plantation system for growing sugar cane (Saccharum officinarum) on a large scale. McDonald, Roderick A. Villages were often located on the edge of the estate lands or in places that were difficult to cultivate such as areas near the edge of the deep guts or gullies. Some 12 to 20 million Africans were enslaved in the western hemisphere after an Atlantic voyage of 6 to 10 weeks. Illustration of slaves cutting sugar cane on a southern plantation in the 1800s. 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. 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. Many slaves would have died from starvation had not a prickly type of edible cucumber grown that year in great profusion. The cut cane was placed on rollers which fed it into a crushing machine. Douglas V. Armstrong is an anthropologist from New York whose studies on plantation slavery have been focused on the Caribbean. The demographics that the juggernaut economic enterprise of the slave trade and slavery represented are today well known, in large measure thanks to nearly three decades of dedicated scientific and historical research, driven significantly by the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and by recent initiatives, including the United Nations Outreach Programme on the Transatlantic Slave Trade and Slavery. By the early 18th century when sugar production was fully established nearly 80% of the population was Black. 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. These findings regarding the social and economic ramifications of Caribbean plantation slavery, as well those regarding Asian immigrants, put the traditional interpretation of the post-slavery period into question. By the mid-16th century, Brazil had become the worlds largest producer of sugar. World History Encyclopedia. The diet was unvaried and meant to be as cheap for the owner as possible. On Portuguese plantations, perhaps one in three slaves were women, but the Dutch and English plantation owners preferred a male-only workforce when possible. Together they laid the foundation for a twenty-first century global contribution to political reform with a democratic sensibility. Some 12 to 20 million Africans were enslaved in the western hemisphere after an Atlantic voyage of 6 to 10 weeks. This allowed the owner or manager to keep an eye on his enslaved workforce, while also reinforcing the inferior social status of the enslaved. Although the enslaved Africans were permitted provision grounds and gardens in the villages to grow food, these were not enough to stop them suffering from starvation in times of poor harvests. A problem for all male slaves was the fact that there were far more of them than females brought from Africa. Find out more about our work towards the Sustainable Development Goals. But as the growth of the sugar plantations took off, and the demand for labour grew, the numbers of enslaved Africans transported to the Caribbean islands and to mainland North and South America increased hugely. Until the Amelioration Act was passed in 1798, which forced planters to improve conditions for enslaved workers, many owners simply replaced the casualties by importing more slaves from West Africa. 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 itineraries of seafaring vessels sometimes offered runaway slaves a means to leave colonial bondage. Focuses on sugar production in the Caribbean, the destruction of indigenous people, and the suffering of the Africans who grew the crop. 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. Caribbean islands became sugar-production machines, powered by slave labor. 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. Few illustrations survive of slave villages in St Kitts and Nevis. Aykroyd, W. R. Sweet Malefactor: Sugar, Slavery, and Human Society. St Kitts is probably the only island in the West Indies that has a map showing the location of all the slave villages. The production of sugar required - and killed - hundreds of thousands of enslaved Africans. Blocks of sugar were packed into hogsheads for shipment. The main source of labor, until the abolition of chattel slavery, was enslaved Africans. By the middle of the 18th century the slave plantation system was fully implemented in the Caribbean sugar colonies. The number of enslaved labor crews doubled on sugar plantations. . By the early 18th century enslaved Africans trading in their own produce dominated the market on Nevis. The abolition of the slave trade was a blow from which the slave system in the Caribbean could not recover. Slave villages represent an important but little-known part of the Caribbean landscape. 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. A water mill was in lower right with a cane field in the center. 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. A roof of plantain-leaves with a few rough boards, nailed to the coarse pillars which support it, form the whole building.. Similarly, the boundaries and names shown, and the designations used, in maps or articles do not necessarily imply endorsement or acceptance by the United Nations. They were usually close enough to the main house and plantation works that they could be seen from the house. The Slave Codewent viral across the Caribbean, and ultimately became the model applied to slavery in the North American English colonies that would become the United States. 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. Science, technology and innovation are critical to responding to this pressing need. The juice from the crushed cane was then boiled in huge vats or cauldrons. After being established in the Caribbean islands, the plantation system spread during the 16th, . View images from this item (3) William Clark was a 19th century British artist who was invited to Antigua by some of its planters. 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. Most people are familiar with slavery in the antebellum US South. The Caribbean is home to the Haitian Revolution, which produced the worlds first black freedom state and the subsequent proliferation of constitutional democracies. 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. Similarly, the boundaries and names shown, and the designations used, in maps or articles do not necessarily imply endorsement or acceptance by the United Nations. By the early seventeenth century, some 170,000 Africans had been imported to Brazil and Brazilian sugar now dominated the European market. Ultimately, the Brazilian sugar industry found stiff competition from the Caribbean, first from the tiny island of Barbados, and then a hodgepodge of British-, French . Sugar production was important on a number of Caribbean islands in the late 1600s. During the first half of the seventeenth century about ten thousand slaves a year had arrived from Africa. 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 . At the same time, local populations had to be wary of regular slave-hunting expeditions in such places as Brazil before the practice was prohibited. The Caribbean was at the core of the crime against humanity induced by the transatlantic slave trade and slavery. A striking feature of the village area is the dense mass of bushes and trees, including coconut palms. If they survived the horrific conditions of transportation, slaves could expect a hard life indeed working on plantations in the Atlantic islands, Caribbean, North America, and Brazil. Finally it can also provide information on their dress and fashions, through the recovery and analysis of items such as dress fittings, buttons and beads. 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. 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. During this time period there was 1.4 million slaves in the caribbean which was 40 percent of the 3.5 million slaves in america. Last week, leading figures in the Caribbean Community's Reparations Commission described the Drax Hall plantation as a "killing field" and a "crime scene" from the tens of thousands of . This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon this content non-commercially, as long as they credit the author and license their new creations under the identical terms. Europe remains a colonial power over some 15 per cent of the regions population, and the relationship between the United States and Puerto Rico is generally understood as colonialist. The plantation system was first developed by the Portuguese on their Atlantic island colonies and then transferred to Brazil, beginning with Pernambuco and So Vicente in the 1530s. Institutional racism continues to be a critical force explaining the persistence of white economic dominance. Fifty years ago, in 1972, George Beckford, an Economics Professor at the University of the West Indies, published a seminal monograph entitledPersistent Poverty, in which he explained the impoverishment of the black majority in the Caribbean in terms of the institutional mechanism of the colonial economy and society. The Caribbean is well positioned to discharge this diplomatic obligation to the world in the aftermath of its own tortured history and long journey towards justice. 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. TheUN Chronicleis not an official record. Fields had to be cleared and burned with the remaining ash then used as a fertilizer. 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. 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. So Tom took on all the characteristics later assumed by the islands of the Lesser Antilles; it was a Caribbean island on the wrong side of the Atlantic. Cite This Work Sugar of lesser quality with a brownish colour tended to be consumed locally or was only used to make preserves and crystallised fruit. Presenting evidence of past wrongs now facilitates the call for a new global order that includes fairness in access and equality in participation. In the St Kitts plantations, the slave villages were usually located downwind of the main house from the prevailing north-easterly wind. Presenting evidence of past wrongs now facilitates the call for a new global order that includes fairness in access and equality in participation. This book covers the changing preference of growing sugar rather than tobacco which had been the leading crop in the trans-Atlantic colonies. A series of watercolour paintings by Lieutenant Lees, dated to the 1780s are one exception. The company was unsuccessful, selling fewer slaves in 21 years than the British . . Revolts on slave ships cascaded into rebellions on plantations and in towns. 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. For this reason, European colonial settlers in Africa and the Americas used slaves on their plantations, almost all of whom came from Africa. . Before the arrival and devastation of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Caribbean region was buckling under the strain of proliferating, chronic non-communicable diseases. By 1750, British and French plantations produced most of the worlds sugar and its byproducts, molasses and rum. Slave labour has a connetion to sugar production. In addition, the refineries needed a great deal of timber as fuel for their furnaces, and providing it was another laborious task for the plantations slaves. Their houses were little different from those of the white servants at the time. 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. These were some of the most skilled laborers, doing some of the . His design shows one or two rows of slave houses set downwind of the estate house. 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. Part of a feature about the archaeology of slavery on St Kitts and Nevis in the Caribbean, from the International Slavery Museum's website. The many legacies of over 300 years of slavery weighing on popular culture and consciousness persist as ferociously debilitating factors. The Caribbean is home to some of the most economically and socially exploited people of modernity. In short, the Caribbean that began its modern history as a centre of crimes against humanity can turn this world on its head and be recast as the centre of a new consciousness that celebrates justice and freedom for all. A slave plantation was an agricultural farm that used enslaved people for labour. Slaves on sugar plantations in the Caribbean had a hard time of it, since growing and processing sugarcane was backbreaking work that killed many. ", 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. It is also true that, just as with farming today, most of the profits in the sugar industry went to the shippers and merchants, not the producers. In the decades that followed complete emancipation in 1838, ex-slaves in Guyana (formerly In this way, black enslavement became the primary institution for social and economic governance in the hemisphere. Washington, D.C. Email powered by MailChimp (Privacy Policy & Terms of Use), African American History Curatorial Collective, The Wreck and Rescue of an Immigrant Ship, Disaster! In the 17th and 18th centuries slaves were moved from Africa to the West Indies to work on sugar plantations. The clash of cultures, warfare, missionary work, European-born diseases, and wanton destruction of ecosystems, ultimately caused the disintegration of many of these indigenous societies. 1700: About 50 slaves per plantation 1730: About 100 slaves per plantation Jamaica 1740: average estate had 99 slaves of the island's slave population was employed because of sugar 1770: average estate had 204 slaves Saint Domingue More diversified economy Harshest slave system in the Americas Barbados It was the basis of wealth creation in both production and commerce. Finally, states imposed taxes on sugar. Other villages were established on steep unused land, often in the deep guts, which were unsuitable for cultivation, such as Ottleys or Lodge villages in St Kitts. Revd Smith observed. The Irish Slaves Myth does not seek to right an historical wrong against Irish people; instead, it has been created in order to diminish the African- . The Portuguese Crown parcelled out land or captaincies (donatarias) to noble settlers, much like they did in the feudal system of Europe. There were many instances of slave uprisings resulting in the deaths of the plantation owner, their family, and slaves who had remained loyal to their owner. https://www.worldhistory.org/article/1795/life-on-a-colonial-sugar-plantation/. Alan H. Adamson, Sugar Without Slaves: The Political Economy of British Guiana, 1838-1904 (New Haven, 1972), 119-21 . These plantations produced 80 to 90 percent of the sugar consumed in Western Europe. Wars with other Europeans were another threat as the Spanish, Dutch, British, French, and others jostled for control of the New World colonies and to expand their trade interests in the Old one. With most of the workforce consisting of unpaid labour, sugar plantations made fortunes for those owners who could operate on a large enough scale, but it was not an easy life for smaller plantation owners in territories rife with tropical diseases, indigenous populations keen to regain their territories, and the vagaries of pre-modern agriculture. The spread of sugar 'plantations' in the Caribbean created a great need for workers. For this reason, European colonial settlers in Africa and the Americas used slaves on their plantations, almost all of whom came from Africa. 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. Over time, as the populations of colonies evolved, mixed-race European-locals, freed slaves, and sometimes even slaves were employed in these technical positions. Before the arrival and devastation of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Caribbean region was buckling under the strain of proliferating, chronic non-communicable diseases. In the Caribbean, many plantations held 150 enslaved persons or more. Black slavery was a modern form of racial plunder, and the obvious consequences of this economic extraction are seen in structural underdevelopment. University of Minnesota Libraries", "The role of sugar cane in Brazil's history and economy", "Sephardic trading connections between Barbados, Curaao and Jamaica, 1670-1720", "Half-Truths and History: The Debate over Jews and Slavery", "How Jewish Immigrants Spurred the Barbadian Rum Trade", "Small Farms, Large Transaction Costs: Haiti's Missing Sugar", "The Greater Caribbean: From Plantations to Tourism", "Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History", "NEW PERSPECTIVES ON SLAVERY AND EMANCIPATION IN THE BRITISH CARIBBEAN", "Sugar Mills, Technology, and Environmental Change: A Case Study of Colonial Agro-Industrial Development in the Caribbean", "El Caribe comparte los impactos causados por industrias azucarera y ganadera", "Sugar and the Environment - Encouraging Better Management Practices in Sugar Production and Processing | WWF", "High dietary fructose intake: Sweet or bitter life? In addition, it serves as a model for new forms of equity, including in climate and public health justice. Plantations, Sugar Cane and Slavery on JSTOR are two . It shows the enslaved couple with their sparse belongings. The first village for newly free labourers, Challengers on St Kitts, was set up in 1840 when a customs officer John Challenger sold or rented small lots out of a tract of land to newly free labourers. The refined sugar then had to be dried thoroughly if it was to be as white and pure as the top merchants demanded. Huts like this needed constant maintenance and frequent replacement. We contribute a share of our revenue to remove carbon from the atmosphere and we offset our team's carbon footprint. Extreme social and racial inequality is a legacy of slavery in the region that continues to haunt and hinder the development efforts of regional and global institutions. Constitution Avenue, NW Learn more on the geographical spread of the colonial sugar plantation system in our article Sugar & the Rise of the Plantation System. 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). Written by a noted nutritionist later in his career. According to slave records, over 11 million African slaves were captured and enslaved from Africa before 1800. In short, ownership of a plantation was not necessarily a golden ticket to success. The sugar plantations grew exponentially so that 90% of the island consisted of sugar plantations by the year 1680. Consequently, after 1660 very few new white servants reached St Kitts or Nevis; the Black enslaved Africans had taken their place. William Penn (1644-1718), founder of Pennsylvania, he owned many slaves.