Agriculture In The Sugar Revolution

During the sixteenth through the eighteenth centuries the sugar trade was driven by high consumer demand, and the slave trade.

By the mid-1500s in Spanish Caribbean islands and Portuguese Brazil, colonists had turned to the quick and highly profitable cultivation of sugar, a crop that required constant attention and exhausting labour. They tried to recruit native Americans, but many were sick and eventually died from diseases brought by Europeans, such as smallpox, diphtheria, and

The long-term effects of the Columbian exchange included the swap of food, crops, and animals between the New World and Old World, and the start of the transoceanic trade. In order to produce a profit, Portuguese explorers were the first to established sugar cane plantations in Brazil. They then sold this crop to the Old World where it was a popular commodity because it provided Europeans with a sweetener for foods. In addition, European produce was brought to the New World, including “…wheat, vines, horses, cattle, pigs, sheep, goats, and chickens… Where they sharply increased supplies of food and animal energy.” This fusion of crops between the Old and New World became fundamental in enhancing the diets and food of both populations.

When the Americas were just beginning to form, spirits accelerated their colonialism. At first, sugarcane production was introduced to the Western Indies or Caribbean Islands by Christopher Columbus. The West Indies land was not suitable to grow wine vines or grains for beer, instead Columbus introduced sugar canes to the Indies, creating a major sugar plantation in the West

One of the biggest technological turning points in human population history was the Agricultural revolution. The Agricultural revolution provided a surplus of resources that increased a given population’s survival. This happens when a hunter-gatherer society learns to farm instead of solely depending on hunting for food or other resources. During the Agricultural revolution, with fertile soil and knowledge of climate, the potential of farming could produce a large surplus of resources with carrying capacity. This advancement in resource management increased life expectancy compared to previous hunter gathering societies. Nutrition is the name of the game, which provided people livelihood and health so people could live longer. This means mortality rate decreases via population surviving for longer periods of time. On a graph, population can represent the x value and resources as the y, and both values have a positive correlation. Therefore, producing more resources increases the population growth during this time of social development. During the Agricultural Revolution, a surplus of goods created a social stratification system that made populations more stable than the previous hunter-gatherers. Hm?

Sugar is one of the most important items that was discovered in the new world back in the 1300’s. The reason for this is that in the 1300’s hardly anyone knew what sugar was until Christopher Columbus went to the Bahamas and came back to Spain with sugar in the 1400’s. So what drove the sugar trade?, well there are many factors that drove it some of them were Land meaning the natural resources used to make sugar, Labor, meaning human resources that are needed to make sugar, and Investment Capital which is money used to buy tools and land. Sugar could have become such a desired good due to the fact that people in Europe found out that there is such a thing with the qualities of sugar or maybe it could be because of the low cost of slaves

In the early years of South America, natives relied on farming to provide an adequate amount of food for their population. While the use of plantations helped influx the trade industries due to the surplus in products produced by the plantations. Sugar was a major export in the South

Because of Britain’s colonies’ land and climates, they were more efficiently producing sugar. Britain had a perfect trade route for trading sugar, and had two particular places that were perfect for growing/making sugar (Doc 1), which were Jamaica and Barbados. Jamaica and Barbados had the perfect setting for sugar making. They had the correct temperature, latitude, soil, and rainfall amounts (Doc 2). The land was a sugar making machine. Because of Jamaica, Barbados, and their trading route, Britain had an advantage in the Sugar Trade. They could grow sugar in places where others couldn’t even get close to the right setting.

Sugar was irresistible and that is why it was one of the biggest global trade items. There were pro’s and con’s to the sugar trade. Europeans got wealthy and powerful while slaves were worked to death.

Sugar has been a staple in the diets of Europeans for centuries. From desserts to tea, sugar has been added to everything. While it is unhealthy in large doses, the demand for the saccharide does not falter. Before sugar could be mass produced by machines, much of the labor was done by slaves. While this benefitted white Europeans, they were the only ones to have profited from this new sugar craze. The African population suffered immensely from the sugar industry as the working conditions of sugar plantations were brutal and they had no civil rights as slaves.

The cause and effects of the Haitian Revolution have played, and continue to play, a major role in the history of the Caribbean. During the time of this rebellion, slavery was a large institution throughout the Caribbean. The success of the sugar and other plantations was based on the large slave labor forces. Without these forces, Saint Domingue, the island with the largest sugar production, and the rest of the Caribbean, would face the threat of losing a profitable industry.

Many historians justify that the evolving of the industrial revolution was based on slavery and mainly the triangular trade. The triangular trade was the route taken by Europeans to transport goods to Africa in exchange for slaves to be taken to the Americans. The triangular trade was seen as the first system of global commerce which linked Britain, Africa and the Americans. The most important colonies for the sugar growth were West Indies islands. During the 17th and the 18th century Dutch settlers in Brazil had perfected their sugar cultivation at the same time the triangular trade was taking place between America, Britain and Africa. As the

By the mid-sixteenth century, Portugal had succeeded in establishing a sugar economy in parts of the colony's northeastern coast. Sugar production, the first large-scale colonial agricultural enterprise, was made possible by a series of favorable conditions. Portugal had the agricultural and manufacturing know-how from its

When most people think of the West Indies, they mainly think of Jamaica, Barbados, and Hispaniola (the Dominican Republic and Haiti), which also happen to be some of the most popular vacation areas. Yet, after a flight over to any of these hot spots, one would begin to notice the land is sprinkled with old sugar plantations, the countries and territories are heavily populated with African and Creole descendants, and there is a clear division between wealthy communities and their slum-like counterparts. These characteristics were brought upon the West Indies through Sugar Trade, beginning roughly around the first English settlements in the 1620’s and living through the passing of the English Slave Trade Act on March 25, 1807. Europeans began

This revolution as it is was a major element of change to the Caribbean economically and socially as well. With the introduction of sugar plantations there was chattel slavery and all its implications on Caribbean heritage and history. John F. Campbell (2010) in his study posited that Caribbean enslavement and its West African labour force was purely the result of economic necessity.