The Economics of Slavery

FOUNDATIONS OF THE ATLANTIC WORLD HIST 1301 | History The Economics of Slavery For those who made it to their ultimate destination, life was just as terrible as it had been throughout the Middle Passage. They were forced to perform backbreaking, never-ending labour. The majority of the crops farmed by Africans held in slavery in the Americas required a lot of labour. Tobacco seedlings had to be moved to the fields and the seeds had to be sown by hand back then. When tobacco leaves were ready to be harvested, labourers would remove the leaves off the plant, hang them to dry, and then pack them into big barrels and roll them to the riverbank or shore to be loaded onto a ship and shipped to Europe. In order to cultivate rice, seedlings had to be manually moved. Before filling the cleared area with water, enslaved people constructed earthen dikes and removed the underbrush from swamplands. They encountered snakes and mosquitoes that carried yellow fever and malaria while working in the marshy areas. The most labor-intensive crop farmed by enslaved people was sugar, which frequently needed hundreds of labourers on sugar estates. All of them worked as part of big labour groups all day, except for the very youngest and the very oldest. It was perilous and hard work. Because sugar cane was grown so densely, workers may get bitten by snakes hiding in the field underbrush. Workers collected the cane by using machetes to cut it close to the ground and then slicing it into smaller pieces to make it simpler to remove from the fields after fertilising and weeding it. Legs and feet were frequently sliced by machetes wielded by sweaty, exhausted labourers. When wounds grew infected, workers may either bleed to death or pass away. Overly sluggish workers suffered beatings. After that, workers carried the chopped cane to a mill where it was crushed by big rollers that frequently grabbed and damaged workers' hands. The sap dissipated fast, so this had to be done within twenty-four hours of cutting the cane. The method of making sugar involved hours of standing close to roaring flames where workers frequently were burned. The workers boiled the crushed cane to produce a liquid that was refined and crystallised into sugar. Planters rotated production, harvesting sugar cane in one area while it grew in another, in order to maximise revenues. The quick depletion of soil nutrients by sugar cane meant that labourers regularly had to clear ground for new fields. Slaves were required to cut the wood needed to heat the cane sap, tend to the structures and cattle on the estates, and produce and process sugar cane. Labourers devoted more time to caring to their own gardens, fishing, and gathering natural edibles because slaveholders did not spend much money on feeding the enslaved people. Slaveholders frequently offered their victims shots of rum, a common libation on a sugar plantation, to give them energy and ease their suffering. Numerous fatalities were caused by infectious diseases, overwork, poor food, and accidents. Slaveholders had to purchase more slaves annually to keep their labour force intact because the Caribbean's enslaved population was not self-reproducing due to the high newborn death rate. The cost was substantial. The cost of a healthy young adult might equal the annual labour earnings of an ordinary European. Planters in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, paid 6,000 pounds of sugar for each African enslaved in 1684. Every year, between 2,500 and 3,000 fresh hostages were needed. This was very different from the English mainland colonies in North America, where the population was able to increase via reproduction and enslaved people did not die in such large numbers due to the less physically demanding task of cultivating and processing tobacco. People who were held as slaves in the Americas were able to maintain their humanity and dignity despite their living situations. Married couples had offspring, some of whom lived to adulthood. They established new kin networks, referring to coworkers as "brother" and "aunt" in lieu of the kinspeople they had been removed from. They combined Christian ideas they had received from their captors with parts of other African customs to form new faiths. They created unique cuisines that provided them memories of home by combining delicacies imported from Africa with local components. African influence was still evident in the storytelling, dancing, and music they produced. Additionally, slaves fought the attempts of their owners to take advantage of them in many ways. They set fire to sugar barns and cane fields that were awaiting transport to Europe, ruined tools, and interfered with machinery. They fled; in Jamaica's highlands, fugitives established villages and lived in concealment. Enslaved people killed slaveholders and overseers on many instances when they rebelled armed. The suffering of Africans held in slavery did not seem to affect Europeans in the slightest, and their need for sugar only increased with time. Planters in Barbados alone sent over 5,000 tonnes of sugar to England in 1650. It was double that amount fifty years later. The need for slave labour increased along with the demand for sugar. Approximately 2,500 Africans were bought into slavery by Europeans between 1450 and 1600; in the sixteenth century, the majority of these individuals were transported to Hispaniola, Cuba, Brazil, and Venezuela. But as sugar plantations were built in the Caribbean by England, France, the Netherlands, and Denmark starting in the seventeenth century, the annual number of Africans taken into slavery in the Americas increased to about 18,680. 61,330 individuals passed through the Middle Passage annually in the eighteenth century, when the Caribbean and Brazilian coasts were home to hundreds of sugar mills. Of them, 38% were transferred to Brazil and 42% were sent to work in the Caribbean. Just 4 to 5 percent of the total was claimed by the British colonies on the North American continent. A large deal of wealth was created for some by the trade in slaves and sugar, which supported several companies and employed thousands of people. Employment was available for dock workers, goods drivers, customs officers, sailors, shipbuilders, ship captains and sugar refinery employees. Sugar was an indirect source of income for bakers, pastry chefs, candy producers, and grocery stores. The makers of the barrels used to store sugar and other goods manufactured by enslaved people, such as rice, tobacco, and indigo, as well as those who gave enslaved people cheap clothes, shoes, and food items like salted fish, generated money. Huge profits were made by banks and insurance firms, and owners of sizable sugar plantations sometimes used their earnings to build opulent palaces or purchase upscale items. Such affluence translated into political power with ease. In order to safeguard their interests, sugar planters in Britain were able to effectively lobby Parliament. Many of these planters also entered politics, gaining seats in the House of Commons and the House of Lords through the acquisition of titles and estates. The British navy started providing its sailors with a daily ration of grog, a concoction of rum, sugar, and lime juice, owing to the influence of the sugar lobby in Parliament, which further boosted the earnings of British sugar growers.