Sugar Changed the World

The title of Part 2 comes from Aronson and Budhos’s argument that life as a slave on Caribbean plantations was a literal Hell. With the colonization of the Americas by Europeans, sugar plantations were set up in the Caribbean and Brazil. Millions of Africans were brought across the Atlantic Ocean as slaves; 900,000 Africans were brought as slaves to the English Caribbean colonies of Jamaica and Barbados, which “were just two of the sugar islands” (32). With this colonization and the establishment of plantations, sugar became a major part of the world economy: “Between the 1500s and the 1800s, sugar drove the entire economy linking Europe, Africa, Asia, and the Americas. The true Age of Sugar had begun—and it was doing more to reshape the world than any ruler, empire, or war had ever done.” (35)

Among the slaves brought to Barbados to work on a sugar plantation was Olaudah Equiano. Because he was sickly, he did not work on the fields. However, he did learn to write and wrote an autobiography giving a first-hand perspective on life as a slave. Slaves had to work in the sugar fields or clearing the land for sugar cultivation. Women, boys, and less physically strong men often worked as weeders, a labor-intensive job that involved clearing away undergrowth from the sugar fields. Some slaves worked as specialists, watching for when the sugar canes were ripe. Cutters “worked brutal, seemingly endless shifts during the harvest” cutting down stalks of sugar cane (39). The sugar canes were then boiled in copper vats. A specialized slave called the boiler oversaw the process. After boiling, the sugar had to be further refined. Slave women separated pure, white sugar from the brown granules.

Watching the slaves on the plantation was the overseer, who had to be terrifying and brutal figures to prevent slave revolts or attempts to escape. The owners of plantations built Great Houses, but they usually did not live in them, instead living in their home countries in Europe. Overseers tended to be poor men from Europe who had “absolute power” over their slaves and rarely had sympathy for them.

Sugar also drove a complex world trading system. Aronson and Budhos reject the term “Triangle Trade” traditionally used by historians. Instead, they call it the Spherical Trade, argue that it was more complex than a triangle between Africa, the Americas, and Europe. For example, they discuss how Gerard Beekman’s 18th-century general store in New York got its goods directly from South America, and they give the example of how “Africans who sold other Africans as slaves insisted on being paid in fabrics from India” (37).

Slaves created a form of resistance by developing their own methods of dance and music, such as the dance rumba in Cuba, the dance Maculelê in Brazil, and the music and dance bomba in Puerto Rico. Some slaves did manage to escape. In Brazil, escaped slaves, who were called maroons, established a nation called Palmares in the mountains of Brazil. The country lasted from 1600 to 1695 and had a population of 20,000 to 30,000 at its peak. It was strong enough that European powers had to sign peace treaties with it (56).

Meanwhile, sugar was in high demand in Europe, used in lavish baking projects like cakes at royal weddings. At the same time, it was commonly used with tea, a product Europeans first called “chaw” in 1615. It was common by the 1700s to use sugar with tea, coffee, and hot chocolate, all bitter drinks that had become popular in Europe. Because of these uses, the consumption of sugar increased dramatically: “In one hundred years, the amount of sugar an English person used had increased by 450 percent. And that was before sugar really took off” (67).

Sugar also changed European diets. While before it had been used for decorative purposes or as a general spice, sugar began to be used to make sweet desserts. Originally sugar was still only available to the wealthy, but its use spread to the working class as they began to drink tea. Tea with sugar became an important source of energy for English workers, who were increasingly working long, grueling shifts in England’s factories. In 1900, when sugar was used in tea, syrups, and desserts, “world production of sugar reached six million tons” (69). Even further, it was the trade and wealth developed from sugar that helped create England’s factory system in the first place. Aronson and Budhos conclude by arguing that the labor of enslaved Africans in the sugar plantations made the Industrial Revolution possible.