Those who reached their final destination faced an existence as hellish as they had experienced on the Middle Passage. The labor to which they were put was backbreaking and never ending. Most of the crops grown by enslaved Africans in the Americas were labor intensive. At that time, tobacco seeds had to be planted by hand and the seedlings transplanted in the fields. At harvest time, workers stripped tobacco leaves from the plant, hung them to dry, and packed them in large barrels that they then rolled to the coast or a riverbank to be taken on board ship and transported to Europe (Figure 5.22).
Rice cultivation also required the transplanting of seedlings by hand. Enslaved people first cleared the undergrowth from swampland, built earthen dikes, and then flooded the cleared land with water. As they worked in the swampy waters, they were exposed to snakes and mosquitos carrying malaria and yellow fever.
Sugar, the most valuable crop grown by enslaved people, also required the most labor, and sugar plantations often contained hundreds of workers. With the exception of the very youngest and the very oldest, all of them toiled all day as part of large work gangs. The labor was grueling and dangerous. Sugar cane was densely planted, and undergrowth in the fields could hide snakes that bit workers. After fertilizing and weeding the cane, workers harvested it by cutting it close to the ground with machetes and then chopping it into smaller pieces to make it easier to remove from the fields. Machetes wielded in tired workers’ sweaty hands often slashed legs and feet. Workers might bleed to death or die when wounds became infected. People who worked too slowly were beaten.
Laborers then transported the cut cane to a mill to be crushed by heavy rollers that often caught and mangled workers’ hands. This had to be done very quickly, within twenty-four hours of cutting the cane, because the sap evaporated quickly. The workers boiled the crushed cane to extract a liquid that was clarified and crystalized into sugar, a process that required hours of standing next to roaring fires where workers were often scalded. To maximize profits, planters rotated production, so while sugar cane was growing in one field, it was being harvested in another. Because sugar cane rapidly depleted nutrients in the soil, laborers frequently also had to clear land for new fields. In addition to growing and processing sugar cane, enslaved people had to tend to the plantations’ buildings and livestock and cut the wood needed to cook the cane sap.
Slaveholders spent little money on food for the enslaved people, so laborers spent additional time tending their own gardens, fishing, and foraging for wild foods. To give them energy and dull their pain, slaveholders often gave them shots of rum, a plentiful beverage on a sugar plantation.
Link to Learning
Visit the National Museums Liverpool site to learn more about slavery in the Caribbean and how archaeologists have learned about this institution.
Beyond the Book
Contrasting Images of Slavery
Few European painters created images of slavery. François-Auguste Biard of France and Agostino Brunias, who was born in Rome and lived on the Caribbean island of Dominica, were exceptions. The first painting that follows, by Brunias, shows women at the market (Figure 5.23). The women in the center wearing white may be free women of color, a favorite subject of this artist.
The second image, by Biard, was made approximately fifty years later, shortly before slavery was abolished (for the second time) in the French colonies (Figure 5.24).
- How do these paintings differ in subject matter and style?
- Brunias has been described as depicting slavery in a romantic way. Where do you see evidence of this in the painting shown here?
- What details in Biard’s painting might make viewers support abolition?
Infectious disease, overwork, poor diet, and injuries claimed large numbers of lives. Because infant mortality among enslaved people in the Caribbean was rampant, the enslaved population was not self-reproducing, and slaveholders had to buy more people each year to maintain their labor force. Prices were high. A healthy young adult might cost as much as an average European could earn in a year’s worth of labor. In 1684, planters in Santo Domingo (the Dominican Republic) paid six thousand pounds of sugar per enslaved African. Some 2,500 to 3,000 new captives were required each year. This differed substantially from the English North American mainland colonies where, because the work of growing and processing tobacco was less physically grueling, enslaved people did not die in such high numbers, and the population was able to grow through reproduction.
Despite the conditions in which they lived, enslaved people in the Americas managed to retain their dignity and humanity. Couples married and produced children, some of whom survived. They formed new kin networks, calling fellow laborers “brother” and “aunt” to replace the relatives from whom they had been taken. They created new religions with elements of various African practices and Christian elements learned from their enslavers. They combined foods brought from Africa with local ingredients to create new cuisines that reminded them of home. The influence of Africa persisted in the music, dance, and stories they created. Enslaved people also resisted the slaveholders’ efforts to exploit them in numerous ways. They damaged tools, sabotaged machinery, and set fire to cane fields and barns full of sugar awaiting export to Europe. They ran away; in the mountains of Jamaica, runaways formed communities and lived in hiding. On several occasions, enslaved people rose up in armed rebellion, killing the slaveholders and overseers.
Largely unmoved by the misery of enslaved Africans, Europeans possessed an insatiable appetite for sugar that only grew as time passed. In 1650, planters in Barbados alone shipped about five thousand tons of sugar to England. Fifty years later, that amount had doubled. As the demand for sugar grew, so did the demand for enslaved laborers. Between 1450 and 1600, approximately 2,500 enslaved Africans a year were purchased by Europeans; in the sixteenth century, most of these people were sent to Hispaniola, Cuba, Brazil, and Venezuela. Beginning in the seventeenth century, however, as England, France, the Netherlands, and Denmark established sugar plantations in the Caribbean, the number of enslaved Africans brought to the Americas rose to some 18,680 per year (Figure 5.25). In the eighteenth century, by which time thousands of sugar mills dotted the coast of Brazil and the Caribbean islands, 61,330 people traversed the Middle Passage each year. Forty-two percent were sent to labor in the Caribbean and 38 percent to Brazil. The British colonies of the North American mainland claimed only 4 to 5 percent of the total.
The trade in both sugar and enslaved people sustained numerous industries and employed thousands of people, creating great wealth for some. Shipbuilders, ship captains, and sailors found employment, as did dock workers, freight drivers, customs agents, and workers in sugar refineries. Bakers, pastry cooks, candy makers, and grocers all indirectly made money from sugar. People who made the barrels that held sugar and the other products produced by enslaved people—tobacco, rice, and indigo—profited, as did those who supplied inexpensive clothing, shoes, and foodstuffs like salted fish for enslaved people. Banks and insurance companies earned enormous sums as well, and those who owned large sugar plantations often invested their profits in other industries, built magnificent mansions, or bought luxury goods.
Such wealth was easily transformed into political power. Sugar planters in Britain successfully lobbied Parliament to protect their interests, and many planters went into politics, holding seats in the House of Commons and, by using their wealth to purchase titles and estates, the House of Lords. It was thanks to the sugar lobby in Parliament that the British navy began to give its sailors a daily ration of grog, a mixture of rum, sugar, and lime juice, increasing the profits of British sugar planters even more.
The content of this course has been taken from the free World History, Volume 2: from 1400 textbook by Openstax