Sugar Slave Trade in Caribbean

¶ … Sugar

When it comes to the slave trade, there are many facets, periods and facts surrounding slavery and how it progressed that can be explored, nitpicked and analyzed. However, that overall subject is rather broad and without focus, one could literally write a book about the subject and not run out of fresh material to look at or use. However, the author of this report would avoid that by focusing on the middle passage, the sugar trade that occurred during the same and why slavery was the common choice to facilitate the sugar trade rather than focus on the use of indentured servants or even paid labor. While the fairly easy answer is that the subjugation and exploitation of blacks allowed for good labor for free other than the movement and control of the slaves.

Analysis

Even with the fairly obvious reasons why slaves were the tool of the trade used to provide labor for the sugar trade, the issue is far from being monolithic when it comes to who supported it, who did not support it and what happened as a result of this back and forth. The sugar harvesting situation in question has come to be an extremely salient example of triangular trade. Beyond that, it was a very profitable example. What is meant by triangular trade is that there three, rather than two, points of commerce when it came to the economics of how the sugar trade worked. Manufacturing goods were traded for the West African coast in exchange for slaves that were traded from that point. Those slaves were then shipped to the sugar colonies to work the fields. This is the "middle passage" referenced in the title of this report. Thirdly, there was the shipment of completely and harvested sugar, molasses and rum that were shipped from the islands to England. All of this went on despite the fact that slavery was technically illegal in England dating back to 1772. Beyond that, Parliament was in a tizzy about the fact it was going on in the columns and in the thick of the broader trade movements of the same. Even with slavery itself being outlawed in 1772, the sugar trade that involved the slavery was not banned until 1807 and the slaves themselves were not emancipated until 1833 (Michigan, 2016).

While the use of paid labor and/or indentured servants was technically an option prior to the banning of the use of slaves, the conditions and situations that were enforced during the sugar trade that involved the salves would not have been acceptable given the conditions that he slaves faced. Mortality rates were alarmingly high for the slaves that worked in the area. In total, there were roughly four million slaves brought to the Caribbean as part of the sugar trade. Almost every single one of those millions of slaves ended up on sugar plantations. The conditions face by the slaves were extremely harsh. The prior-mentioned mortality rates faced by slaves were sometimes ten times as much as those of the Europeans in the same area. The slaves did not always take all of this laying down as slave uprisings were quite common. While these uprisings were usually stomped out quite quickly, it was obvious that the British were willing to rule with brute and violent force to get the cheap labor they wanted. Also, this cheap labor was obviously superior in terms of overall cost as compared to indentured servants or paid labor. Lastly, neither of those two other groups would put up with the oppression that was exerted on the slaves and that is probably one of the other main reasons the British colonists took that path even as the mainland thought the practice to be unethical and barbaric (Michigan, 2016).

Many of the same movements we see in more modern times like boycotts of "blood diamonds" from Sierra Leone or a general avoidance of coffee or other goods that are not borne of free and fair trade environments (Starbucks has such a program), much the same thing happened in the late 1700's. Inded, many held that buying sugar produced from these slave colonies in the Caribbean was unconscionable and thus should not be done. Predictably, the plantation owners recoiled at the idea of limiting or stopping slavery in the area as they were clearly making a mint off of it. Some plantation owners argued for the use of slavery on economic grounds including the concept of being able to pay off the debt of the planation. Of course, doing so on the backs of slaves who were being paid nothing and being treated like dirty was unacceptable to those that pursued and proposed abolition (Michigan, 2016).