When looking at American history, its important to understand that for a considerable portion of the colonial period, pretty much the entirety of what would eventually become the United States and Canada was considered much less important than the smattering of random small islands known as the Lesser Antilles in the Caribbean. The reason for this was sugar. Though sugar first became available in Europe in the twelfth century, thanks to new trade routes opened by the Crusades, it’s importation was largely dominated by the rich Italian city-states, who sold it to the rich and powerful as an exorbitant luxury. However, this began to change when the Portuguese started exploring down the coast of Africa, laying claim to various tropical islands off the African coast. Not being ones to miss an opportunity, they began growing sugar cane on these islands, turning the Canary Islands, Madeira, and Sao Tome into major exporters by the end of the fifteenth century. Making sugar was a fairly difficult and labor intensive process, but luckily, from their perspective, the Portuguese also had ready access to slaves from Africa.
Portugal dominated the European sugar market for the next century, flooding the continent with crystalized sweetness, turning it from a rare luxury for the uber wealthy to a regular enjoyment of the upper crust of society. As with today, sugar was super popular, being all addictively delicious and what not. However, one needed certain types of tropical locales in which to grow it. Luckily, the recently discovered islands of the Caribbean proved perfect. The Spanish first began growing sugar cane in the Caribbean in 1501, with Cuba and Jamaica becoming large producers over the next two decades. However, finding it much easier to just pick up gold off of the ground in other parts of the New World, the Spanish did little to expand the industry, leaving it largely under the control of Portugal, who began building sugar plantations in Brazil by 1540. At first, being complete and utter asshats, the Portuguese plantation owners enslaved the local natives to work for them, but when the locals began dying in large numbers, killed by Old World diseases, they began importing large numbers of slaves from Africa.
By the start of the seventeenth century, the rising popularity of coffee and tea in Europe, imported from the Middle East and Asia respectively, caused a significant spike in the demand for sugar. As a result, many other European nations began looking for places to grow their own sugar so they wouldn’t have to pay the exorbitant Portuguese prices. Luckily, though claimed by Spain, the Lesser Antilles in the Caribbean had been largely left alone, not being seen as worth anything since they had no gold. Devoid of life, due to a series of pandemics after the Spanish visited them a century ago, the islands were perfect for sugar cultivation. England claimed Bermuda in 1611, the Dutch Republic claimed Saint Martin in 1618, and the French claimed St. Kitts in 1625. By 1650, pretty much all of the islands were claimed and producing sugar. From that point forward, nearly any war involving the powers of western Europe included attempts to secure each others’ sugar producing areas in the Caribbean. In 1630, the Dutch seized large parts of Brazil, which they held for the next twenty-four years, in 1655 the English seized Jamaica, and in 1670 the French seized what would later become known as Haiti. Following many wars, it was not uncommon for the losers to cede claims over wide swaths of territory in North America just to retain control of a few small sugar producing islands.
Growing and processing sugar cane was hard and difficult work. The sugar had to be cultivated and harvested under the harsh tropical sun, and processed in large boiling vats to create molasses, which was shipped back to Europe to be processed further into sugar. For some strange reason, nobody really wanted to do this type of work, so the powers that be began focusing on more coerced supplies of labor, including enslaved Native Americans and indentured servants. The enslaved Native Americans were largely captured from the nearby coasts of North and South America, but as disease ravaged their numbers and the survivors increasingly avoided the coast for obvious reasons, they became more scarce. Indentured servitude largely involved poor Europeans who were willing to sell their rights away for years at a time in return for passage to the opportunities of the New World, as well as various criminals and other unwanted groups, including unwanted religious groups. The French forced thousands of Protestant Huguenots into indentured servitude, and the British did the same to thousands of Irish Catholics. However, even this unwilling labor proved to be insufficient.
African slaves began being imported by the Caribbean sugar plantations in large numbers by the mid-seventeenth century. Growing from the early Portuguese slave trade, the English, French, and Dutch got into the act, shipping thousands of people across the Atlantic every year. Though at first treated similar to indentured servants, the pursuit of profit led to an increasing barbaric system over time. Slaves were crammed tightly into the holds of ships for the crossing of the Atlantic, some 10 percent dying on the way. Upon arrival, most were at first kept in seasoning camps, where they adjusted to their new climate, diet, and social environment, learning the language and the tasks they would be expected to carry out. Unable to adapt, another 20 to 30 percent would die at this stage. As for the survivors, most would be dead within twenty years, worn down by a poor diet and the harsh working conditions. This barbaric cycle required the almost constant importation of new slaves, even when laws were changed so that the children of slaves automatically became slaves at the start of the eighteenth century. Of the 10 to 15 million Africans enslaved and sent to the New World between 1500 and 1850, some 90 percent were sent to Brazil or the Caribbean. Though many died, some African slaves managed to become free, forming their own distinct cultures and even rising up the social ladder at times to the point where they could own their own plantations and slaves, because history is just that kind of fucked up. All of this just so the world could taste a little sweeter.
