232 CHAPTER 10 RACE, NATION, AND THE MEANING OF FREEDOM, 1821–1888
By 1820 the fi rst of a series of technological in-
novations began to transform the character of the
sugar industry in Cuba. Mill owners had to expand
operations and invest heavily in steam-operated
machinery to compete with beet sugar. The larger
the mill, the more sugar it could process, the more
fuel it consumed, and the more labor it needed.
Smaller and less effi cient mills were at a severe
competitive disadvantage. Modern machinery al-
lowed the mills to expand in size, but they could
do so only gradually because of limited transporta-
tion facilities. Because railroads were enormously
expensive, and in any case there was not suffi cient
capital on the island or in Spain for large projects
of this type, they did not become important until
much later. The mills also carried a huge overhead
because they were largely unused during the off-
season. Slaves and livestock had to be fed and shel-
tered even when the harvest was completed. The
problem of fuel for the mills also slowed their ex-
pansion. The forests close to the mills were quickly
consumed, and transport of wood to the mills
proved prohibitively costly.
In response to the need for bigger mills (cen-
trales), large plantations also developed in Cuba.
Sugar production traditionally had been set up in
one of two ways: the land was cultivated by resi-
dent or temporary labor, or the land was parceled
out to farmers, known as colonos, who worked the
land for a salary or a share of the crop. They planted
and harvested the cane and brought it to the mill to
be processed; processing was paid for with sugar.
Now, to satisfy market demand, successful planters
expanded the land under cultivation and deployed
massive numbers of enslaved Africans to work
more than sixteen hours per day, clearing land,
planting and cutting cane, and transporting it to
the mills. Not surprisingly, given this high level of
exploitation, most slaves died within eight years.
This trend toward concentration in the owner-
ship of land and increased capitalization of sugar
plantations was a direct result of market-induced
changes in the sugar industry.
As a result, sugar production expanded in the
fi rst half of the century through an increase in the
size of plantations, the number of mills, and en-An Afro-Cuban woman called Black Carlota led a fearsome slave rebel-
lion in 1843 that terrifi ed Spanish offi cials and creole plantation owners,
who relied on enslaved African labor to work the sugar plantations, as
depicted in this 1830 image. [Bettmann/Corbis]