Slavery

The capitalist plantation system was an economic system oriented to producing a highly commercialised crop using an archaic social form - slavery - to provide its labor. The profits from sugar production provided the impetus for the development of the plantation system that matured in the Mediterranean and eventually spread across the Atlantic to the Americas. Other commercial crops would be adapted to this system such as cotton, indigo, and tobacco, but sugar was the first.

Sugar cane cultivation had its origins in Southwest Asia. From there it was carried to Persia and then to the eastern Mediterranean by Arab conquerors in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Shortly after sugar cane's introduction to the Mediterranean, it was being grown on estates similar to the later plantations of the Americas. By the fourteenth century Cyprus became a major producer using the labor of Syrian and Arab slaves. Eventually sugar made its way to Sicily where a familiar pattern of enslaved or coerced labor, relatively large land units, and well-developed long-range commerce was established. The Portuguese and the Spanish both looked to Sicily as a model to be followed in their own colonies in the Atlantic, and in 1420 Prince Henry sent to Sicily for cane plantings and experienced sugar technicians.

An innovation in sugar production, the roller mill, was introduced to the Mediterranean (perhaps by the Sicilians) and the Atlantic Islands in the fifteenth century. The roller mill reduced the time and labor needed to prepare the sugar cane, thereby increasing the mill's capacity. It was this technology, combined with the system of production developed in the Mediterranean, which was transplanted and expanded to the Atlantic Islands. The final component necessary for the industry's growth was satisfying its requirement of a large labor force. The solution was the incorporation of African slaves.

Slavery in Iberia had been an aspect of daily life since the Roman Empire. The continual warfare between the Muslims and the Christians in Iberia had created a constant source of bondsmen, but only on a very small scale. There was no dramatic change in Iberian slavery until the Portuguese conquest of Ceuta in 1415 made the trafficking of North African slaves possible. By the 1440's slavery had a profound resurgence and this was due to the Portuguese "raid and trade" expansion down the West African coast. In 1448 more than one thousand Africans had been imported to Portugal, and this figure increased by 800 to 900 Africans a year. By the end of the century this increase in the slave trade coincided with the burgeoning cane fields in the Algarve and Madeira. This need for cane field labor altered permanently the nature of Portuguese slavery from one of domestic servitude to plantation slavery. In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries almost all of the Atlantic Islands: the Azores, the Canaries, the Cape Verde Islands, S'o Tom', and Madeira experienced sugar booms. In 1425 Madeira was colonized under the auspices of Prince Henry and by 1460's it had become the largest single producer of sugar in the Western world.

As a young man Christopher Columbus was trained in the Madeira sugar trade. He brought this experience to the New World on his second voyage of 1493 when he introduced sugar cane plantings to the Caribbean. But it wasn't until the early sixteenth century that the sugar industry began to thrive first in Santo Domingo, then Cuba, and soon after in Puerto Rico. Unfortunately the growth of this industry in the Caribbean was hindered by the constant drain of people and resources to the mainland, drawn by the lure of gold and silver.

The Portuguese discovered Brazil in 1500. Very early in the settlement process the colonial office requested a sugar technician. By 1518 the first plantation was in operation but it was not until the 1530's that sugar agriculture was firmly established in Brazil. In 1591 the sugar industry was expanding rapidly to meet the growing demand in European markets. By the end of the sixteenth century the Atlantic slave trade had been regularized, making it a dependable source for labor. Until this point in time the European colonists had been using indigenous people, who the Europeans had incorrectly named "Indians", as slaves. The need for skilled slaves was critical if the sugar industry was to expand. The best slave investment became the West Africans who had experience from the Atlantic or Caribbean plantations as sugar masters, purgers, blacksmiths, kettle men, and sugar craters. By the early seventeenth century the shift from indigenous slaves to African slaves was well under way.