Slave Labor in the Sugar Cane Plantation System

839 Words2 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Slavery in american colonial

Slavery was a cruel institution used worldwide to exploit and dehumanize a certain group of people. African slave trade and slavery is an ingrained part of European colonization. Many European nations enslaved Africans. The first to enslaved Africans were the Portuguese, followed by the Dutch, English, French and lastly the Spanish. Slavery came about because Indian labor declined and was scarce. A demand for forced labor was created and the Spanish Crown turned to Africa Slaves were seem as inferior and were at the bottom of the hierarchy based on race. African slaves were distributed to the Caribbean, Brazil, The United States, and mainland Spanish America. Africans went to many parts if the Indies and were mainly concentrated in lowlands and coastal regions, places where the Indian population declined rapidly. Seeing growth in slave traffic. Spain followed the example of the English and French, and set up a sugar plantation economy that relayed on black slave labor. The three largest slave holding societies in America were Brazil, the Caribbean islands and Southern United States. Slavery is treating a slave as chattel or property, something that can be bought and sold. Many of the slaves came from Africa. Slaves were chosen because they were a form of the cheapest and most reliable labor. The Native Americans were subjected to Spanish rule and were outlawed from being enslaved. Justifications were made for enslaving the Africans. The African slaves had no rights to protect them. Their skin color was an automatic thing that singled them out as alien .The justifications were, they are free from pagan Africa and could enjoy the sacraments of the Catholic Church and Hispanic acculturation. (Holden 10-1-2013) Slavery was...

... middle of paper ...

... and the improvement of the island's sugar technology. The Ten Years’ War (1868-780 led to the end of the Cuban Slave trade in 1867. A plantation is an agricultural enterprise that that has capital intensive machinery, foreign capital, and labor intensive forced labor and produces a single crop for export. Slave labor is an investment within the plantation system. It is a long process that takes much labor and powerful machinery. Sugar making uses steam, fire, cane juice and slaves. First the cane is cut, then it is carried to the mill. At the mill, it is place in a trough and crushed. The juice is take out and boiled. It crystallizes and put into boxes. This labor is arduous, as the workers had to cut down sizable stalks of sugarcane ranging in height from 5 feet to 15 feet with only a cane knife. The slaves don’t get a lot of rest and it is a long day of work.

Show More
Related

  • Sugar Trade Dbq

    881 Words  | 2 Pages

    Slave labor is the final factor that drove the sugar trade and made it so successful. Slaves were the manual laborers on the plantations, doing the actual harvesting and boiling because the owner wasn’t there to do so (Document 8). Without the slaves working the farm, everything was pretty much useless. There is also a direct correlation between the number of slaves and the tons of sugar produced. This is shown in Document 9, where the island of Jamaica starts out with 45,000 slaves, and produces 4,782 tons of sugar. When the number of slaves increases by less than half to 74,500, the amount of sugar produced is more than tripled at 15, 972 tons. This clearly exhibits how slaves were essential to sugar

    Read More

  • White Man's Burden Summary

    1766 Words  | 4 Pages

    Slavery is the idea and practice that one person is inferior to another. What made the institution of slavery in America significantly different from previous institutions was that “slavery developed as an institution based upon race.” Slavery based upon race is what made slavery an issue within the United States, in fact, it was a race issue. In addition, “to know whether certain men possessed natural rights one had only to inquire whether they were human beings.” Slaves were not even viewed as human beings; instead, they were dehumanized and were viewed as property or animals. During this era of slavery in the New World, many African slaves would prefer to die than live a life of forced servitude to the white man. Moreover, the problem of slavery was that an African born in the United States never knew what freedom was. According to Winthrop D. Jordan, “the concept of Negro slavery there was neither borrowed from foreigners, nor extracted from books, nor invented out of whole cloth, nor extrapolated from servitude, nor generated by English reaction to Negroes as such, nor necessitated by the exigencies of the New World. Not any one of these made the Negro a slave, but all.” American colonists fought a long and bloody war for independence that both white men and black men fought together, but it only seemed to serve the white man’s independence to continue their complete dominance over the African slave. The white man must carry a heavy

    Read More

  • Abina And The Important Men Analysis

    1051 Words  | 3 Pages

    Ever since there has been humanity, slavery has been a mechanism used by people in order to subjugate and dehumanize other individuals. Abina and the Important Men is a book that illustrates how slavery was still able to manifest, even after it had been abolished within British society. By enslaving young women under the false pretense that the individuals were wards, powerful African leaders and British rulers were able to maintain a social hierarchy where African women occupied the lowest rung. The trafficking of Africans through the Transatlantic Slave Trade, brought wealth to European and other western nations as well as African leaders who were willing to cooperate. Europeans, such as the Portuguese, British, and French, first began arriving to Africa in the 16th century since they were drawn by the valuable resources that could be found in coastal, African societies.

    Read More

  • Similarities Between North And South American Slavery

    816 Words  | 2 Pages

    African slaves were brought to the America’s by the millions in the 17th and 18th century. The Spanish and British established lucrative slave trades within Africa and populated their new territories with captured and then enslaved Africans. The British brought the slaves to their new colonies in North America to work on the large plantations and the Spanish and Portuguese brought the slaves to South America. Slavery within North and South America had many commonalities yet at the same time differences between the two institutions.

    Read More

  • Analysis of White Over Black: American Attitudes Toward the Negro by Winthrop D. Jordan

    1182 Words  | 3 Pages

    Winthrop D. Jordan author of White Over Black: American Attitudes Toward the Negro 1550-1812, expresses two main arguments in explaining why Slavery became an institution. He also focuses attention on the initial discovery of Africans by English. How theories on why Africans had darker complexions and on the peculiarly savage behavior they exhibited. Through out the first two chapters Jordan supports his opinions, with both facts and assumptions. Jordan goes to great length in explaining how the English and early colonialist over centuries stripped the humanity from a people in order to enslave them and justify their actions in doing so. His focus is heavily on attitudes and how those positions worked to create the slave society established in this country.

    Read More

  • The Real Heroes of Slavery in the United States

    1983 Words  | 4 Pages

    I want to start with the history of slavery in America. For most African Americans, the journey America began with African ancestors that were kidnapped and forced into slavery. In America, this event was first recorded in 1619. The first documented African slaves that were brought to America were through Jamestown, Virginia. This is historically considered as the Colonial America. In Colonial America, African slaves were held as indentured servants. At this time, the African slaves were released from slavery after a certain number of years of being held in captivity. This period lasted until 1776, when history records the beginning of the Middle Passage. The Middle Passage showed the increased of African slaves were bought into America. The increase demand for slaves was because of the increased production of cotton in the south. So, plantation owners demanded more African slaves for purchas...

    Read More

  • Slavery in The Cotton Kingdom

    915 Words  | 2 Pages

    During the American Revolution and the civil war, the North and the South experienced development of different socio-political and cultural environmental conditions. The North became an industrial and manufacturing powerhouse as a result of rise of movements like abolitionism and women’s right while the South became a cotton kingdom whose labor was sourced from slavery (Spark notes, 2011).

    Read More

  • Slavery In Colonial America Essay

    791 Words  | 2 Pages

    Because the American slave system was based on this principle of human chattlehood, slaves were confined in many ways that handicapped them from even being able to act or live as a human being. The very idea of human chattelhood gave the master unlimited control over his defenseless slave. Chattels are not permitted to get married, acquire or hold property. Chattels cannot have rights and hence the slave has no rights. Chattels can be bought and sold and so justifies the existence of the slave trade. Chattels do not have any claim to legal protection, therefore the slave has none and must tolerate the cruelties of slavery. Chattels are not to be educated or instructed in religion. And lastly, chattels do not possess the freedom of speech and of the press.

    Read More

  • Slave Trade: What Drove Sugar Trade?

    855 Words  | 2 Pages

    Sugar plantations have a field where sugar cane stalks are cut and grown and then there are boiling house where sugar cane stalks are crushed and boiled which is all runned by slave labor. Because slaves planted the cane stalks, harvested sugar stalks, crushed them, and boiled the sugar stalks sugar was made(8). According to David richardson the slave Trade, Sugar, and British Economic growth, “An Average purchase price of adult male slave on west African coast in 1748 was 14£ and in 1768 was 16£”(9a).Because slaves were so cheap slave traders may profit by, selling adult male slaves to sugar plantation owners for twice as much as they bought them in Africa. John Campbell Candid and Impartial Considerations on the Nature of the Sugar Trade describes the slaves as “so necessary Negro slaves purchased in Africa by English merchants”(11). Because africa trade slaves to English merchants Africans got things they did not

    Read More

  • Role Of Oppression In Colonial America

    1252 Words  | 3 Pages

    Most of them were forced to do hard labor in mines, while others were taken to large homes and they worked as servants. They were fed and housed poorly. There were many slaves who tried to resist slavery and run away. Sometimes the enslaved Africans would rebel. In order to prevent retaliation, the Spanish government passed slave codes and laws in order to regulate the treatment of the slaves. Some of the laws tried to soften harsh conditions the slaves had to face, however most of them were created to punish them and keep them in bondage. Over time, Europeans had associated slavery with black Africans. Having a dark skin tone eventually became a sign of inferiority to many Europeans. Slavery which was originally created in order to prove labor force, led to racism. The slave trade lasted for about 400 years. From as early as the 1500’s to the mid 1800’s. This contact between the Americas and Africa had also formed part of the Columbian Exchange . Africans suffered tremendously in slavery, being separated from their families, whipped, and

    Read More

  • James Henry Hammond Research Paper

    610 Words  | 2 Pages

    Slavery was a horrible institution that was widely practiced in the Southern and Mid-Atlantic states in the United States during the antebellum period. It was formally abolished in the United States in 1865, but is still practiced on a very small scale today. It also happens in other countries. Slavery is having somebody who does everything for you without pay. Usually if a slave refused to do their work, they were abused. Three important people who supported slavery in the United States were James Henry Hammond, John C. Calhoun, and William Harper.

    Read More

  • Slavery in Colonial America

    846 Words  | 2 Pages

    Slavery became of fundamental importance in the early modern Atlantic world when Europeans decided to transport thousands of Africans to the Western Hemisphere to provide labor in place of indentured servants and with the rapid expansion of new lands in the mid-west there was increasing need for more laborers. The first Africans to have been imported as laborers to the first thirteen colonies were purchased by English settlers in Jamestown, Virginia in 1619 from a Dutch warship. Later in 1624, the Dutch East India Company brought the first enslaved Africans in Dutch New Amsterdam.

    Read More

  • The History of Slave Music and its Impact on Modern Music

    2049 Words  | 5 Pages

    Slavery is a form of forced labor in which people are taken as property of others against their wishes and will. They are denied the right to leave or even receive wages. Evidence of slavery is seen from written records of ancient times from all cultures and continents. Some societies viewed it as a legal institution. In the United States, slavery was inevitable even after the end of American Revolution. Slavery in united states had its origins during the English colonization of north America in 1607 but the African slaves were sold in 1560s this was due to demand for cheap labor to exploit economic opportunities. Slaves engaged in composition of music in order to preserve the cultures they came with from Africa and for encouragement purposes..

    Read More

  • American Slave and Plantation Economy

    1390 Words  | 3 Pages

    The Slaves were normally brought the plantations when it was just a bushy land, and ordered them to cut down trees, cultivate the land manually and make water...

    Read More

  • Slavery's Role In The Plantation

    305 Words  | 1 Pages

    I liked how you pointed out how a hierarchal structure plays a significant role in successively operating a plantation. It’s pretty evident, but I never gave it much thought because it was generally assumed. However, it places emphasis on why the masters would get so concerned when a slave ran away and would send people to hunt them down. A slave was a part of their workforce, and thus was valuable because they did the dirty work for the master. Less hands to the labor meant having to pay again for another slave to replace the one lost.

    Read More

More about Slave Labor in the Sugar Cane Plantation System

Open Document