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sugar
“How many sugars?”
Exploring The Dark History of Sugar Through Five Images.
Sugar has a wide history, yet it also has a dark history that needs to be acknowledged. Sugar was a driving force and a catalyst to the slave trade, but it also became an icon of change and a symbol of progress in the modern world.
In these five objects, I hope to highlight the remarkable moments during the Atlantic slave trade, legislative changes, and the legacy it has left on our society today.
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The Slave Trade
Between 1500-1900, the Atlantic slave trade grew at a rate that outstripped all other branches of European commerce. In 1770, roughly two and a half million people from throughout Western and Central Africa had been forcibly moved and transported across the Atlantic to the New World colonies in conditions of great cruelty. By 1900 this totalled nearly 15 million people.
I refer to these enslaved and entrapped Africans as ‘people’ rather than ‘slaves’ because to refer to them as otherwise strips them of the identity that was taken away from them. Principally, because these people who were previously farmers, merchants, husbands, wives, fathers, sons and daughters were dehumanised and degraded, becoming the property of their ‘master’, and endured terrible hardships and brutalities for the rest of their lives that are hard to imagine today.
As a result of the slave trade, today people of African descent are spread throughout the Americas and Western Europe, creating an African Diaspora.
Despite the slave trade developing separately from the expansion of the sugar economy and transporting slaves across the globe for almost 200 years prior, from 1600 the transportation of African people to the New Worlds fuelled the cheap labour of the sugar industry. Principally, sugar, and its industry, is responsible for the destruction of millions of reported and non-reported lives as well as the enslavement of almost 15 million Africans until the nineteenth century.
Between 1640 – 1807, Britain was one of the most successful slave-trading countries, and together with Portugal, accounted for nearly 70% of all Africans transported to the Americas during these years. As a figure, between the seventeenth and early nineteenth centuries, British traders transported an estimated 3.1 million Africans (of whom around 2.7 million arrived) to the British colonies in the Caribbean, North America, South America and other neighbouring countries.
Enslaved Africans loading coal into a shipment in Morant Bay, Jamaica, c.18th century
Throughout the Atlantic slave trade, the British Caribbean was one of the highest performing populations, totalling exports of sugar, coffee, tobacco and cotton worth around £2.669 million in 1770 alone.
Almost half of the 2.7 - 3.1 million Africans that disembarked in the Caribbean, landed in Jamaica - Britain’s most valuable and profitable possession in the Caribbean in the seventeenth century. British Barbados was also a common destinations at this time due to the booming sugarcane industry that emerged in the 1640s. As a result of this, Britain’s overseas trade grew substantially – especially regarding its sugar.
Jamaica is a great example for showing the impact of the British sugar industry on the African population as over a span of 200 years, the number of slaves on the island increased almost ten times:
1606-1700: 91,102 to 1701 - 1800: 857,203
Then between 1801-1842 a further 71,291 Africans were transported to Jamaica.
2. The Triangle Trade
To support this system, the Atlantic slave trade developed a triangular trade and its ‘Middle Passage’ in the seventeenth century between Europe to Africa, to the Americas and back to Europe, lasting for over 300 years.
On the first leg, traders and merchant ships carrying textiles, rum and other manufactured goods travelled from Europe to Africa in exchange for enslaved Africans and loaded them into the ships.
On the second leg, was the voyage across the Atlantic from Africa to the American colonies or the New World, known as the Middle Passage. This generally took 6-8 weeks, during which Africans were tightly packed into each ship, with little manoeuvre room. Often, many captured Africans would escape their fate by committing suicide or starving themselves. Once in the Americas those Africans who had survived the journey were offloaded for sale and put to work on plantations or domestics as enslaved labour.
The last leg of the triangular trade route consisted of the ships returning from the Americas to Europe with the produce enslaved Africans cultivated in the New World– sugar, coffee, tobacco and later cotton – back to consumers in Europe to purchase.
This three-part journey, involving three continents completes the triangle of a reoccurring and barbaric system that was the European market.
3. The Middle Passage
The Middle Passage was part of the route travelled in the Atlantic slave trade.
The Middle Passage crossed the Atlantic from Africa and was used to transport an estimated 60,000 people per year - but over 12.5 million across the entirety of the slave trade- to the Americas. The horrors of the Middle Passage were made worse as many Africans had never seen the sea and males and females were separated.
Drawing of ship plan showing stowage of a British slave ship, Brookes (1788)
On top of this, as seen in the drawing above, the slave ships were small and conditions were wretched; it was unbelievably hot and cramped, and people were often chained down. Mortality rates were also extremely high. Between 20-40% of those people destined for slavery died during transportation from the African coast. The total number of deaths directly attributed to the Middle Passage is estimated to be up to 2 million, but a broader look at African deaths directly attributed to slavery from 1500 – 1900 suggests the real number rests closer to 4 million people.
If you want to find out more about slavery, visit the International Slavery Museum, in the Maritime Museum building at the National Museums Liverpool. Here you can hear the untold stories of enslaved people and learn about historical and contemporary slavery. There are also displays that explore slave ship voyages.
4. Abolition of the Slave Trade
Victoria became Queen in 1837; a time when enslaved Africans were being given their freedom. However, the campaign for the Abolition of Slavery would take almost 50 years, starting with the British abolitionist movement in 1787.
The abolitionist movement started when English and American Quakers began to question the morality of slavery. During the Georgian period, African slaves were not brought or sold in London, but were brought by masters from other areas. In 1783, an anti-slavery movement began among the British public after proof that people in Africa were being captured and traded by Europeans and taken to the Americas in appalling conditions, to end slavery throughout the British Empire. While the average eighteenth century person might not have had an impact on legislation, they spoke with their money and shifted from purchasing West India sugar produced by slaves to East India sugar, which was ‘free-grown’.
As seen by this sugar bowl, purchasing East India sugar became a badge of honour. Though more expensive than sugar produced by enslaved people, eighteenth-century confectionery shops would advertise that they only used East India sugar in order to distance themselves from the slave trade. This action is as relevant today as it was then, marking a contemporary awareness for our consumer choices.
This change in consumer choice, is highlighted in 1804, when only 150 ships out of 1000 were involved in the slave trade.
In 1833, Parliament passed the Slavery Abolition Act which gave all slaves in the British Empire their freedom and slave owners were given compensation. The process of freeing the 768,000 slaves in the British Empire lasted for four years until 1 August 1838.
The abolition of slavery marked not only a new phase in the history of Britain, but also the beginning of the end of the empire. It was a period in which despite being key players and benefitting from the slave trade most, Britain was one of the first to abolish it and recognise its actions.
Timeline of key dates in slave trade
5. The Legacy of the Atlantic Slave Trade
The Atlantic slave trade shaped modern Britain, yet we still live with its legacies of racial discrimination and Eurocentrism worldwide today.
In the US, those of African descent have received particular discrimination, such as being declared as second-class citizens, forced to accept segregation under the Jim Crow laws, and often subjected to discrimination and racial violence. It took many years of agitation and thousands of deaths before the struggles of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and the 1960s changed both laws and conditions.
In the UK, the Race Relations Act of 1965 were introduced. However, hate crimes and institutional racism, such as has been highlighted in the Stephen Lawrence case in 1993. These incidents are reminders that racism is a persistent legacy of the Atlantic slave trade. Likewise, the George Floyd case in 2020 is a reminder of the prejudices and brutality enacted upon black people by whites.
These serve as reminders of Britain’s dark history, as it claimed a significant stake in the trade and profited immensely from it. Not only were huge individual fortunes generated by plantation owners, but the commerce generated from the triangular system of trade funded the expansion of the British state and benefitted the everyday consumer of commodities such as sugar and tobacco.
Despite its heavy involvement in the slave trade, Britain was one of the first nations with an empire to abolish its slave trade in 1807 and emancipate all enslaved people in its colonies in 1833.
Today, many businesses and heritage sites are openly discussing their association with slavery, bringing to attention not only Britain's past but also their own.