What drove the sugar trade The sugar trade was driven by its land, easy accessibility of slaves, and the sugar itself. Because of these characteristics the sugar trade grow so much around the world. Just about the whole world was involved in the Sugar Trade. The sugar trade went from the years of 1493 to 1833. The trade took place in many different areas of the world.
The Sugar Trade was driven by many factors. Some of which are capital, slavery and complementing industries. Consumer demand and return on investment were all very important aspects to the making of the historic events in which were the sugar trade.Money was, and still is, very important. Sugar was even called white gold by British colonists during the slave trade. In Bittersweet: The Story of Sugar, Peter Macinnis states that the first curse of sugar is capital intensive, meaning a lot of money.
History Why do you think the slave trade grew? (10) The demand for sugar caused the slave trade to grow, for example in 1700 there were already over 500 coffee houses in London, and coffee and tea required lots of sugar to sweeten them. British people loved drinking tea and coffee, and the demand for these drinks grew in the 18th century. This caused the slave trade to grow, because more slaves were needed to meet the increasing demand for sugar. Another reason that the slave trade grew was because of the greed of the merchants, this was because of the fact that one journey of the triangular trade could set them up for life.
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.
The Dictatorial Church The British Empire was the largest and most well known empire in the world, their power and influence spread throughout the nation. In the seventeenth century the British Empire was in demand for sugar and tobacco, which led to the growth of plantations on the islands of the Caribbean. The need for cheap labor to work the plantations started the growth of the African slave trade. Jamaica was a country in the Caribbean whose culture was uprooted by the British; voodoo is a practice that developed and changed because of the teachings of Catholicism. “Jamaica was discovered by Christopher Columbus in 1494 and the Spanish settled in Jamaica by the sixteenth century” (Kurian).
It was during the middles age when Europeans had a great appetite for sugar and that crave was the fuel for the triangle slave trade. Sugar was a miracle spice it was a natural sweetener that popularized tea, coffee, and chocolate which are all naturally bitter. Now sugar Is a very hard spice to cultivate that makes a huge labor force a must and a work force that is willing to work, for sugar cultivation takes a lot of work. Thus slavery is brought into the equation, and the triangle slave trade commences. The triangle slave trade began as a small idea in the mind of a Portuguese entrepreneur, but it would soon explode into a massive force powered by the Europeans.
Africa contained a great number of natural rescources valuable to Europe such as: cotton, palm oil, rubber, ivory, gum, peanuts, bananas, coffee, cocoa, zinc, lead, coal, and copper. These valuable raw materials were used to create products that Europe could export and trade for a huge profit. These products included: fabrics, soaps, candles, tires, drugs, food products, electrical wiring, electrical insulation, rope and twine, jewelry, and many others. The invasion of Africa yielded many valuable economic advancements, and created a logical reason for Europe to invade. European imperialism in Africa was partly due to rivalries between the different European countries involved, with Britain, Germany and France the dominant powers.
Trade in iron, cotton and coal was growing, and so the British didn’t have to use slaves to work the sugar plantations anymore. But these are only the reasons on why the people weren’t so keen on the trade, not the reasons for why the trade was abolished. The reasons on why the slave trade was abolished are now going to be explained in more depth, and I will also decide which reason had the most impact and why. One of the reasons was the slaves themselves. Because they were forced to work and always punished badly for the slightest mistake, they were extremely unhappy and most hated they’re owners.
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.
He supports this argument by looking closely at the meaning of the symbolism behind the color black. (Winthrop 14) The skin color of many enslaved cultures were often linked to the hard labor that was done outside, exposed usually to the burning sun. He ultimately argues that a dark skin became a rationale for enslaving people of darker skin tones. The argument that Williams makes is that Economics was the main driving force behind the creation of Slavery, not so much Racism. To support his thesis, he pointed out that any lower social class was sent to do manual labor.