Why Is Sugar Important To Slavery

1237 Words3 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Role of slavery during colonial america

Audiah Goodson
Dr. Gaitors
His 2303
October 3, 2017

When discussing the Atlantic world, it is impossible to not to discuss the commodities of sugar. In this paper, I will argue how gold and sugar was were two of the main important commodities and how they lead to slavery. The pursuit of commodities largely shaped European commercial aggression in this period. Gold and sugar were not the only commodities that had an effect on trade, but they were the most expensive to come by. People became enslaved because Europeans needed workers for their sugar plantations and their gold mines. The intersection of southern Europeans’ quest for commodities and the labor to help produce them brought about the annexation of Atlantic islands and …show more content…

Sugar set up many different relationships between the Europeans and the rest of the upcoming new world. The group activity we did in class, when we all got into trading groups and each group had their own commodity to sale, at the time no one wanted sugar. All of the groups either was looking for gold, or iron and some needed salt. Sugar became one of the top selling commodities Sugar is one of the reasons the triangle slave trade, got started and became so big. Along with gold, the growing of sugar was in such high demand. With the high demand of sugar, was the need for workers. With the slave trade, many different types of people were enslaved, including the indigenous people, Africans, and the Spanish. More than half of the enslaved people, were of Spanish descent. Among the institutions that Europeans developed in support of their commercial enterprises, nothing had greater affect then that of the people that was involved in the planation system to produce sugar. For a time captives from regional wars, including the crusaders, met the demand for labor on some sugar estates. Venetians on Cyprus may have been the first to recognize the efficacy of slave labor for sugar production and to establish what would become a colonial model for slave based, market oriented sugar production. When discussing the Atlantic World and the significance of it, you can not go over the way sugar came …show more content…

The provided information is not necessary or not sufficient to discuss the topic. The essay has a basic engagement with the proposed topic, but the content lacks sufficient analysis of the topic. Details are too general, not interpreted, or repetitive. The provided information in the essay is, for the most part, necessary and sufficient to discuss the issues of the essay prompt. Contains some appropriate details or examples. The content of the essay addresses the topic with an in-depth analysis. The provided information is necessary, relevant and sufficient to discuss these issues. Details and examples are convincingly appropriate.
Organization of the essay Random or confusing organization and inadequate or poor analysis and argumentation Adequate organization and adequate level of analysis and argumentation Clear and coherent organization with a good level of analysis and many effective points of argumentation Coherent and rhetorically sophisticated organization with a highly sophisticated level of analysis and

Show More
Related

  • Sugar Trade Dbq

    881 Words  | 2 Pages

    Kit-kats, Hershey bars, Skittles, and Jolly Ranchers. The reason these sweets, and many other products, are so popular is because of their sugar content. It’s hard to imagine that something used in nearly every food today was practically nonexistent at one point. But this is true- sugar wasn’t introduced globally until the 1500’s. Following this introduction, the trade that sprung up would come to be one of the most successful and profitable in the world. The Sugar Trade’s success was driven by many factors. Out of those several factors, the ones that promised success were high consumer demand, willing investors with a lot of capital, and the usage of slave labor.

    Read More

  • Sugar Trade Dbq Essay

    714 Words  | 2 Pages

    If you had money you could get land if you had land you could get slaves, if you had slaves you could get sugar & if you had sugar you could get money. If you wanted to grow sugar you needed a lot of land and good hot and humid climate for growing sugar. Everyone started to move to the West Indies to get sugar and money. Lastly Consumer Demand was a huge factor that drove The Sugar Trade.

    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

  • The Characteristics Of Human Slavery In 1450-1750 CE

    1237 Words  | 3 Pages

    After the discovery of sugarcane from the Arabs, European nations began establishing plantation communities throughout the Americas which were rich with sugarcane. With the creation of these plantations, which focused on mass production of various products, a large amount of cheap human labor was necessary in keeping up with production quotas. Therefore, the Europeans found the best option was to import boatloads of African slaves, who were skilled, non Christian, and immune to many of the diseases that the Native Americans had previously perished from. Mexico, under the rule of the Spanish at the time, had previously relied on Aztecs acquired from warfare for human labor. However, as foreign diseases started to contaminate the enslaved in unsanitary conditions, and the Aztecs began to perish at uncontrollable speeds, the Spanish had had to rely on slaves exported from West Africa to fulfill their agricultural needs in plantations, and their economical needs in mines.

    Read More

  • Isbister Chapter Summary

    1409 Words  | 3 Pages

    Cotton, spices, silk, and tea from Asia mingled in European markets with ivory, gold, and palm oil from Africa; furs, fish, and timber from North America; and cotton, sugar, and tobacco from both North and South America. The lucra¬tive trade in enslaved human beings provided cheap labor where it was lacking. The profits accrued in Europe, increasingly in France and Britain as the Portuguese, Spanish, and then Dutch declined in relative power. It was a global network, made possible by the advancing tech¬nology of the colonialists.

    Read More

  • Columbian Exchange DBQ

    661 Words  | 2 Pages

    The trading of products and goods between the old world and new world led to economical and population issues. Although they benefited from trading at first, it introduced several problems (Doc 1, Doc 5, & Doc 7). The Americas shipped sugar, rice, wheat, coffee, bananas, and grapes to the Europeans and in return, the Europeans shipped enumerated articles back such as tobacco, beans, maize, tomato, cacao, cotton, and potato (Doc 5). Through the trading of products and goods, diseases were introduced by the Europeans (Doc 5). Not too long after diseases began to spread, the economy shifts to a large scale of agricultural production resulting in slavery, using black slaves to harvest cash crops such as sugar cane (Doc 1). Two specific products,

    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

  • Harriet Tubman and the Underground Railroad

    1559 Words  | 4 Pages

    Becoming a slave was terrible; someone was either born a slave or kidnapped. When slavery first started, white Europeans went into Africa and kidnapped African Americans. As the years went on this process became too difficult for the Europeans, so they established hundred of trading station along Africa’s West Coast. Local African rulers and black merchants delivered the captured people to the posts and them sell as slaves.

    Read More

  • The Relationship between Sugar and Slavery in the Early Modern Period

    3555 Words  | 8 Pages

    Sugar in its many forms is as old as the Earth itself. It is a sweet tasting thing for which humans have a natural desire. However there is more to sugar than its sweet taste, rather cane sugar has been shown historically to have generated a complex process of cultural change altering the lives of all those it has touched, both the people who grew the commodity and those for whom it was grown. Suprisingly, for something so desireable knowledge of sugar cane spread vey slow. First found in Guinea and first farmed in India (sources vary on this), knowledge of it would only arrive in Europe thousands of years later. However, there is more to the history of sugar cane than a simple story of how something was adopted piecemeal into various cultures. Rather the history of sugar, with regards to this question, really only takes off with its introduction to Europe. First exposed to the delights of sugar cane during the crusades, Europeans quickly acquired a taste for this sweet substance. This essay is really a legacy of that introduction, as it is this event which foreshadowed the sugar related explosion of trade in slaves. Indeed Henry Hobhouse in `Seeds of Change' goes so far as to say that "Sugar was the first dependance upon which led Europeans to establish tropical mono cultures to satisfy their own addiction." I wish, then, to show the repurcussions of sugar's introduction into Europe and consequently into the New World, and outline especially that parallel between the suga...

    Read More

  • Slave Trade: What Drove Sugar Trade?

    855 Words  | 2 Pages

    What might be the biggest contribution to what drove sugar trade is consumer demand. Many popular drinks weren’t sweet and sugar was used as a sweetener. According to Sydney Mintz’s sweetness and power, “sugar as sweetener came to the force in connection with three other exotic imports tea,coffee, and chocolate(4)” because tea, coffee and chocolate

    Read More

  • Characterization through Imagery and Metaphor in The Scarlet Letter

    1265 Words  | 3 Pages

    The above excerpt was provided so that the student would know the focus of the essay. The complete essay begins below.

    Read More

  • The Economic And Social Causes Of Slavery In Colonial America

    991 Words  | 2 Pages

    Slavery existed long before colonial times. Beginning in the 15 century, Portuguese slave traders adopted the slavery and plantation system, followed by the Spanish who virtually developed and perfected the two (Johnson 14). In 1452, the Portuguese colony of Madeira became the biggest exporter and supplier of sugar for Europe in the west (Johnson 14). Ultimately, the wealth they had made attracted thousands to the industry. For this reason, servants and slaves existed before Europeans came to North America. However, the difference between servants and slaves was based on economical and social factors. Between 1619 and 1750, racism and immeasurable profit from agricultural commerce together, became an incentive

    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

  • Atlantic Slave Trade Essay

    1555 Words  | 4 Pages

    Since it was becoming a profitable crop in the Americas. The rise of the “demand for African slaves” (Hine 36) grew. Growth of the Atlantic Slave Trade caused for the transformation of a “harsher form of slavery” (Hine 36) were race was the basis of enslavement of people. The ones who suffered out of this form of slavery was the “Africans and American Indians” (Hine 36). Due to their color of skin and culture they were discriminated and seen as chattel to their masters. Losing their rights as human beings and becoming property of

    Read More

  • Slavery In South America Research Paper

    737 Words  | 2 Pages

    South America required a great amount of slaves due to the rigorous process of sugarcane production. According to Epic World History, “Sugar making, especially in its New World incarnation, has been aptly described as an industry that depends on farming and factory production. Through a series of complex steps requiring substantial skill and technical infrastructure”(“Sugarcane Plantations in the Americas”). Slaves worked in hell-like heat for hours and this caused them to faint and occasionally, die. As time passed, the institution of slavery spread like wildfire and more slaves were brought from Africa to South America.

    Read More

More about Why Is Sugar Important To Slavery

Open Document