108 Atlantic African, American, and European Backgrounds to Contact, Commerce, and Enslavementthe sugar barons of Barbados imported 134,500 slaves, of
Jamaica 85,000, and of the Leeward Islands 44,100. From
8,176 tons in 1663, sugar exports from the British Carib-
bean rose to 50,000 tons by 1750, and 75,000 tons by 1775.
From the Caribbean, sugar spread to Louisiana. In
1795, Frenchman Jean Etienne de Bore exported the colo-
ny’s fi rst sugar crop. Planters fl ocked to the region aft er the
Louisiana Purchase of 1803, and in 1812, Louisiana entered
the union as a slave state. Between 1810 and 1860, the num-
ber of slaves in the cane fi elds grew from fewer than 10,000
to 88,439. Th e planters concentrated production south of
Baton Rouge. By the mid-1830s, production reached 55,000
tons of sugar, by 1849 137,000 tons, and by 1861 253,000
tons. Sugar concentrated wealth in a few hands. In 1860,
525 planters, 12.5 percent of Louisiana’s slave owners,
owned two-thirds of the slaves. Th ese planters owned on
average 110 slaves, 730 acres of land and equipment worth
$14,500, and produced 77 percent of Louisiana’s sugar crop.
Th e richest planter, John Burnside, owned 940 slaves and
$2.6 million in assets. By the Civil War, sugar cultivation
had spread to Texas, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama,
and Mississippi.
Th e Civil War replaced slavery with wage labor. In
1862, Union General Benjamin Butler decreed that plant-
ers pay male laborers $7 a month plus a $3 allowance for
clothing. Butler did not specify a wage for female laborers,
though one may suppose that planters paid women less
than men. If this system was not slavery, it was akin to serf-
dom, for Butler dispatched army patrols to keep workers on
the same plantation. Intent on preserving planters’ access to
labor, Butler nonetheless limited their authority by forbid-
ding corporal punishment. Th e sugar crop was a casualty
of war. Th e 1862 harvest totaled only 47,850 tons. Planters
blamed the Union Army and the indolence of workers for
their woes. At issue was the pace of work. Sugar must be
milled within 48 hours of harvest to avoid spoilage. Th is
narrow window of opportunity required coordination be-
tween fi eld and mill and 24-hour operation of the mill. La-
borers unhappy with their white overseers slackened pace
during harvest and refused to work the mill at night. Labor
sought an advantage by bargaining with planters for better
wages, a practice the Union Army condoned in 1864. Plant-
ers reacted by colluding to keep wages low and by pledging
not to hire workers from another plantation. Th e most ef-
fective tactic was the withholding of half wages until the
end of harvest.Sugar Plantations
Sugar was the basis of the fi rst plantations in the New World.
Th e Portuguese, who had established sugar plantations on
Madeira Island in the mid-15th century, began growing
sugar in Brazil in 1516 with exports to Europe no later than
- At fi rst, the Portuguese enslaved the Tupi-Guarani—
the major Native American group residing in coastal Bra-
zil—to labor in the cane fi elds. As late as 1560, few Africans
supplemented this labor. By the 1580s, plantations in Per-
nambuco had 2,000 African slaves, roughly one-third the
labor force. One plantation in Bahia tallied 38 African slaves
of its 103 laborers in 1591, but all its slaves were African by
1638, mirroring the transition to African labor throughout
Brazil in the early 17th century. Biology and culture shaped
this transition. Th e Native Americans, separate from the
people of Eurasia and Africa for millennia, had no immu-
nity to the diseases of these regions and so died of smallpox
and other Old World diseases once in contact with Europe-
ans. Africans, on the other hand, lived in the same disease
environment as Europeans and had greater immunity than
did the Amerindians. An African slave who survived his
fi rst year in Brazil, the period of seasoning, was likely to
survive longer than a Native American fi eld hand. More-
over, agriculture had sunk deeper roots in Atlantic Africa,
the point of origin of many slaves, than in pre-Columbian
Brazil. Th e Portuguese could more easily superimpose the
grind of the plantation on Africans than on the Amerindi-
ans. With labor secure and the demand for sugar high in
Europe, Brazilian production rose from 10,150 metric tons
of sugar in 1614 to nearly 19,000 metric tons in 1710. By
1737, however, production slipped to 13,600 metric tons,
underscoring that the industry had fallen on hard times.
Between 1650 and 1710, Brazilian sugar lost 40 percent of
its share of the European market. By 1690, Brazilian sugar
totaled only 10 percent of the market.
Th e Caribbean planters had risen to challenge the
early supremacy of Brazil. As early as 1493, Christopher
Columbus had introduced sugar into the Caribbean. In
the scramble to control the islands, the British, by the early
17th century, claimed Barbados, Jamaica, and the Leeward
Islands. In 1663, Parliament granted a monopoly to the
Company of Royal Adventurers Trading to Africa, and in
1672, to its successor, the Royal African Company, to pro-
vision the planters with slaves. Between 1640 and 1700,