This post continues my efforts to explain some of the consequences of the Columbian Exchange, one of my favorite historical topics. Today I want to talk about the importance of sugar in the Caribbean. To read previous posts about the Columbian Exchange, please see

• Introduction to the Columbian Exchange
• The Columbian Exchange and Human Extinction
• Smallpox and the Columbian Exchange
• Horses and Bison and the Columbian Exchange

We all love sugar. In fact, as I recall, humans are genetically predisposed to like the taste of sweet things. Europeans of the Middle Ages, however, did not get to indulge their sweet tooths often, if ever. The reason was simple. Sugarcane did not grow in Europe. Europe was too cold. The only way to get sugar was through importing it. That was prohibitively expensive for all but a handful of Europeans.

All this changed, however, with the Columbian Exchange. The first area of the Americas discovered by the Spanish was the Caribbean. Sugar may not have grown in Europe because of the climate. The temperatures in the Caribbean, however, were very suitable indeed.

Sugar in the Caribbean

Growing sugar in the Caribbean became one of the primary economic activities of the Caribbean. This had several notable consequences. One was obvious. The supply of sugar available to Europeans rose. The price, therefore, fell, and more Europeans than before could enjoy sweetened food. This was an encouraging development. European diets were, to put it mildly, relentlessly bland. Most of the other consequences, however, were not so encouraging.

The second obvious consequence was that growing sugar took place on large plantations. Slaves performed the work on those plantations. Here again we see multiple facets of the Columbian Exchange at work. The Spanish (and later other European colonists) who owned those large plantations weren’t going to do the work themselves, of course. Harvesting sugar under the Caribbean sun is immensely difficult work. The process of refining sugarcane into table sugar is, too. Why not, then, hire the natives of the Caribbean to do the work?

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British plantation on Antigua growing sugar in the Caribbean, 1823. Note the single white person depicted.

 

If you’ve read the previous posts in this series, you know the answer. Diseases like smallpox, malaria, and yellow fever were killing Native Americans, causing their population to decline. War and attempted enslavement by the Spanish didn’t help their numbers, either. But this left absentee European landowners with a dilemma. They weren’t going to grow sugar personally, but the natives of the islands were dying. Where would the labor come from?

The Economics of Sugar in the Caribbean

Most of us know the answer to the preceding question. The labor came from slaves. But nothing made this predestined. Why did it happen, then?Sugar plantation on Puerto Rico, 1885.

 

After all, the plantation owners could have hired European laborers to do the work. Hired workers are better workers than slaves, generally speaking. For slaves, the main incentive is to work hard enough to avoid physical punishment. Sometimes they break tools, so that the work must stall while someone fixes the tool. They also engage in other passive forms of resistance. They may even rebel if conditions become too desperate.

Hired workers present less risk, although they cost wages. Why not hire people to work on these plantations? The main answer is malaria, a disease imported into the Caribbean via the Columbian Exchange.

Evil Air

Europeans didn’t know what caused malaria, although they were near to the answer. Malaria, or mal aria, means “evil air.” Europeans knew to associate the disease with swampy areas. They just didn’t know that mosquitos were the creature that actually spread the illness. The Caribbean had both mosquitos aplenty and swampy areas for them to thrive. Sugar plantations made things worse. The large vats used for containing the syrupy sugar workers distilled from the cane filled with stagnant rainwater when not in use. Mosquito paradise! (Modern people do the same thing when they pile up spare tires outside in their yards.)

All these mosquitos meant lots of malaria, which debilitates at best and kills at worst. So, pretend you are a European worker in, say, 1750. If offered a chance to work at a physically demanding job in brutal heat with a very high chance you’ll contract a debilitating and possibly deadly disease at the same time, what would your response be?

As a result, European plantation owners eventually turned to slaves to grow sugar in the Caribbean. Enslaved people didn’t have a choice about their working conditions. And those conditions were among the most brutal ever encountered. Similarly deadly jobs included things like mining in the ancient world or being a Roman gladiator. Here’s how one historian described conditions on Barbados. It’s among the most tragic passages I’ve come across:

“The West Indies provided the greatest demand because sugar plantations were especially profitable and especially deadly. The profits enabled the planters to pay premium prices for slaves to replace the thousands consumed by a brutal work regimen and tropical diseases. During the 18th century at least one-third of the slaves died within three years of their arrival on the island of Barbados. In addition to the high death rate, slaves suffered from a low birthrate, as a diet deficient in protein and the harsh field work under the tropical sun decreased female fertility and increased infant mortality. In the West Indies, HALF of the slave women never bore a child who survived infancy. At least a quarter of their newborn died within ten days—many by the infanticide of mothers determined to spare their children a life in slavery.”

Sorry to end this blog entry on such a depressing note, but this is the reality of Caribbean slavery. Please continue to my next blog post for the rest of the story.

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