THIS LITHOGRAPH DEPICTS ENSLAVED WORKERS CUTTING SUGARCANE IN TRINIDAD, 1836.
THE HUMAN LOVE AFFAIR WITH SUGAR GOES BACK centuries. People in India first figured out how to extract and purify sugarcane into crystals, and their technique reached Persia in the sixth century. Traveling Arabs during the medieval era brought the know-how to the Mediterranean. But it wasn’t until the age of exploration that the world went mad for the stuff.
It’s hard to imagine something so common today being treasured like gold, but between 1600 and 1800, the rush for sugar and its profits drove much of the world’s economy, creating a trade cycle that linked Europe with Africa, Asia, and the Americas.
When it was rare, sugar was a substance for kings and was presented in elegant desserts and sculptures for their enjoyment. It could also be turned into alcohol or traded for other goods. Some considered it medicinal. Eventually, sugar became something everyone wanted—especially for their tea. By the mid-1700s, English people drank up to fifty cups of tea per day. American colonists drank even more, and they stirred several spoonfuls of sugar into each cup.
Tea in some cases was more than a comforting drink. Factories started cropping up in England to hasten production of the goods that needed to be sold to buy tea and sugar, as well as the cheap fabric used to clothe the enslaved people who produced the sugar. To keep the workers going for long hours at the factory, employers needed something inexpensive, hot, and filling.
Tea—with plenty of sugar—fit the bill.
THE LINK BETWEEN SUGAR AND SLAVERY
THIS LITHOGRAPH DEPICTS ENSLAVED WORKERS CUTTING SUGARCANE IN TRINIDAD, 1836.
GREED FOR SUGAR FUELED THE AFRICAN SLAVE trade. Most enslaved people were taken to sugar plantations in the Caribbean, Brazil, and South America. Only 4 percent were sold in North America.
Alexander witnessed terrible conditions in the canebrakes. The work was arduous, and enslaved people survived an average of just seven years in the sugar islands.
First, enslaved men, women, and children had to prepare the rough soil, sometimes by hand. They worked five-foot-square patches, digging the soil five inches deep. Seeders pushed cuttings into the holes or rows and covered them with earth. Weeders—often enslaved women and small boys—removed undergrowth that choked the growing cane and attracted rats, working ten to fourteen hours a day in brutal heat. Others cut and transported wood to fire the boiling vats of bubbling syrup. Specialists watched the cane ripen. This was an important job: timing was everything in sugar production, and they had to bundle the cane rapidly during the harvest.
At the mill, enslaved people, often women, fed the bundled cane into dangerous machinery. They kept axes at the ready to chop off trapped limbs before people’s entire bodies were ground to bits.
It took a great deal of heat to produce sugar, making the boiling houses so hot they had to be sprayed with water so they wouldn’t catch fire. Huge copper cauldrons boiled sugar into a foamy syrup. Enslaved workers skimmed scum from the surface and strained the syrup repeatedly until it reached the proper purity. Inevitably, some people fell in.
Finally, the thick, clean syrup was left to crystallize. Then enslaved people sorted grains into white and brown piles. The whiter the sugar, the more valuable.
Enslaved people who were thought to have stepped out of line, attempted escape, or dared protest were whipped—sometimes hundreds of times. They were branded, castrated, chained, and locked in dungeons. An enslaved person faced losing a hand.