In Bittersweet: The Story of Sugar, Peter Macinnis states that the first curse of sugar is capital intensive, meaning a lot of money. Money was used to buy the slaves that grew the sugar that people also purchased. Land also had to be bought in for sugar plantations .Wealthy English families owned most of the sugar plantations themselves. Therefore, outside investors were not usually involved. The Slave trade contributed to the Sugar trade.
These were exchanged at a profit on the coast of Africa for Negroes, who were traded on the plantations, at another profit, in exchange for a cargo of colonial produce to be taken back to the home country. As the volume of trade increased, the triangular trade was supplemented, but never supplanted, by a direct trade between home country and the West Indies, exchanging home manufactures directly for colonial produce. Most significant, however, is the fact that the trade in slaves was the key aspect of the triangular trade in which the increasing demand for goods led to the expansion and further development of capitalist industry in Europe. It is important to understand the historical though costly contribution of
Without it, the work would not have gotten done, or as quickly as it did. As ugly as it is to say, without the forced labor, the United States might not be the United States. The massive production of cotton propelled the United States to becoming a world power. With this crop, the United States was able to breakaway from the Crown: all thanks to slavery. Americans, North and South, both supported slavery.
Slavery was such a vital part in the cultivation of cash crops such as sugarcane that it was introduced to North America with its colonization. The availability of land combined with the growing demand of sugarcane in Europe quickly created an insatiable demand for African slaves, whom, by happenstance, tended to be suited well for work in the warm and tropical environments of the Americas. These Africans at first became indentured servants; nevertheless, the growing arrogance of the white man in his spiritual superiority and the need for even more labor led to the swift decline of the indentured servant. When other alternatives to slavery such as cheap white labor and convict laborers failed to deliver the desired results, the prevalent abstraction of a racially-based slave system finally emerged in the 1680’s. Furthermore, slave uprisings would also play a role in the shaping of the structure of slavery.
But as demands for labor grew, so did the cost of paying indentured servants. Numerous plantation owners and white colonists also felt threatened by newly freed servants demand for land (Feature Indentured Servants In The U.S., (n.d.)) The colonial elite understood the “problems” of indentured servitude and agreed with property-owners and turned to slavery as a more profitable and renewable source of cheap labor. The change from indentured servants to racial slavery had initiated. A 1662 Virginia law dictated Africans would remain servants for life, and a 1667 act stated that "Baptisme doth not alter the
Expansion of the country, invention of the cotton gin, and greater demand for cotton were all contributing factors to the changes in the slave population in early America. However as the country was expanding westward, slavery became the main issue. Which states would allow slavery and which opted out of slavery? These issues the federal government took on and began overriding state laws, all these issue pushed the country into civil war. However, what part did slave narratives play in gaining support of the banning of slavery?
As mentioned by William Harper, “The cultivation of the great staple crop cannot be carried on without slaves.” (Harper, Memoir in Slavery, 1837) In a time of western expansion and the cotton boom, some slave traders were able to accumulate great wealth from the slave-trading business and sought opportunities to acquire higher social status and financial stability. A con of slavery was when slaves were driven mercilessly to plant, cultivate, and harvest the crops for market. A failed crop meant the planter could lose his initial investment in land and slaves and possibly suffer bankruptcy. A successful crop could earn such high returns that the slaves were often worked beyond human endurance. Plantation masters argued callously that it was cheaper to work the slaves to death and then buy new ones than it was to allow them to live long enough and under sufficiently healthy conditions that they could bear children to increase their numbers.
Slavery built the U.S.’s economy. As we’ve learned through the readings and all the films and documentaries watched in this class, two of the largest exports out of the U.S. (the South, to be more specific) were cotton and tobacco, which were picked by the slaves. As the demands for cotton and tobacco increased, so did the number of slaves, which unfortunately led to (White Americans) believing to be superior and led to hate and discriminating against a group of people based on their skin color. This led the Civil Rights Movement in 1964, which changed history in America, with some important events that I’ve learned from taking this class. Nat Turner’s Slave Rebellion, (also known as the Southampton Insurrection), which was a slave rebellion that took place in Southampton county in Virginia in August 1831.
The Carolinas came later and was created and advertised as a location for the poor under-class to have a second chance at wealth. In those days wealth was measured in the amount of land that you owned so the untapped vastness of the Carolinas brought many a colonist over with hopes of rebirth. Caribbean also falls under the category of financial yearning as its profitable sugar market helped its English population to flourish and grow. Always present when discussing the matter of new colonization is the idea of religious “freedom”. The colonies of Georgia and Maryland were primarily
The main reason why the portuguese enslaved aficans was so they can have men to work on plantations. During colonial period the demand of suger, tobacco, cotten and other agricultural products increased. When this happened so did the demand of workers to work on the plantations especulay in Brazil. One of the best workers were ones that worked for free and also immune to diseases from the new world, these people were African slaves. The slaves were the the main workers of this time and there were many of them in Brazil, “about 812,000 Slaves,” (Robert Conrad pg.