Free packet of sugar for stepping in the door. You dont seem particularly grateful. So, were thinking about how we are affected by the past. To do what i had just done, handing out a quarter cup of sugar to people who are not my close personal friends, to do that, hand out a quarter cups worth of sugar, this was the middle ages in europe. That is an incredibly extravagant gift. Sugar, in the 1300s, was a rare and expensive good. It was treated as medicine. It was prized and available only to the richest of the rich in western europe. To hand out the small amount i gave you would have been seen as an extravagant thing. Today, it is so common. It is so much a part of our diets. You can go into a gas station and grab a handful and take it with you. I paid for these. Sugar is so cheap and common, it is tougher to avoid it. Is there anyone who has had to give up refined sugar for dietary reasons . How easy was it . Terrible. Prof. Paulett right, its hard. Its in everything. Medicine and pills. It is everywhere. How it came to be, how it went from being a rare and expensive good to a thing that is so common that it is hard to avoid, this gets to the heart of the class. The story of sugars development as a commodity to being something that everyone had access to, it ties closely to the colonization of the americas. And to the development of slavery in the new world. This little good we dont think much about is part of a massive reorganization of all the cultures of the atlantic ocean. That is what we are talking about today. The history of sugar in the americas. It gets to not just where food came from, but into some very significant questions. Sugar was one of the main motors of the slave trade. 75 of all africans brought into the americas in the 1600s were brought to areas where they were growing and making sugar. It was a huge business. Some scholars argue it was the First Industrial enterprise in the western world. This tiny thing, this sweet stuff in packets, it has a very significant history. That is what we are talking about today. As a lesson in just how boring evil can be, when we think about slavery, one of these evils in history, the people at the time did not see it that way. It was made of thousands of tiny decisions that added up to create this institution of slavery in the americas. So, focusing on the english caribbean, because this is a course in english colonial history, we are talking about sugar, but we are talking about much more than that. Without this commodity, this development, the caribbean, the shape of north American History would be different. To give us a sense of the scale, we can chart a timeline. We start in 1607 in jamestown. Chesapeake bay. English colonies and the new world. After 20 or 30 years, there has been some expansion. The puritans of new england have expanded out from Massachusetts Bay to form new colonies. The second tobacco colony is founded in virginia and maryland. Seekingish are investment in colonial wealth. They focused particularly on uninhabited islands in the caribbean. You have a few colonies being formed in small, volcanic places. Mostly on the eastern edge of the caribbean sea. 60 years later, england has not really expanded that dramatically into the caribbean. They conquered jamaica, which is no small prize. When we look at the mainland of north america, you see a rapid explosion of colonies. 12 of the famous 13 have been founded by this point and are being developed rapidly. Thats why sugar is so important. The development of the east coast of north america is tied closely to the caribbean. As these tiny islands become developed, become planted, home to massive sugar producing plantations owned by the english, the east coast of north america develops into a support system to these caribbean islands. Traditionally, in American History class, we focus on this part of the map. By doing that, we lose Important Information on what is happening down here that is pushing the history in those places. Again, sugar seems trivial, seems unimportant. The history of sugar, particularly english sugar, is tied closely to everything we do today. The history of how we do things. The history of the country we live in today. These Little Islands here, they have a big influence. Particularly, if we focus in on the island of barbados down here, which will be the main focus of todays lecture. Its almost impossible to see on the map. You zoom in and its still hard to see. You zoom in further, and this cluster of pixels is the island of barbados. Tough to spot from a satellite view. Its not terribly large. Its about 170 square miles. That is one fourth the size of madison county, where we are right now. This island has an amazingly large influence on the shape of englands empire and the english atlantic. All of this is driven by sugar. Questions before we jump in . The mike is open. Theres more sugar in it for you. Alright. The history of sugar prior to the english settlements of barbados, we have talked about how it was a rare and expensive good. We talked about it back in the day. We talked about portuguese expansion into the atlantic. Portugal had tapped into a european love of sugar. It is easy to love. It makes other foods taste better. It gives you a jolt of energy. You miss it when it is gone. It is an addictive substance. Theres reasons people wanted it so much. It gives you a buzz. Portugal had tapped into it, expanding sugar. The crop originally developed in south asia and had come west. Most european sugar in the middle ages came from the mediterranean. Portugal sort of gets this technology, expands it into the aisle of madera. In the 1500s, they take Sugar Technology and expanded even further to the coast of brazil at the bottom of the map. As part of this trade networks, the portuguese had innovated other things. Tapping into west african slave Trading Networks provided a source of labor for sugar growth. Not the only source of labor, but an important one. This is what happens to sugar between 1500 and 1600, the slow expansion through the portuguese trade networks. Throughout the 1500s, the portuguese had expanded and innovated and invested in sugar and developed a basic set of techniques, improved upon older techniques. Improved in terms of production capacity. The system the portuguese developed, this is a later image which shows the basic technologies they had developed. Hopefully, looking at this, you are getting a sense that growing sugarcane is one thing, but making sugar is another. To take the raw cane juice that grows in sugarcane, the plant on the slide, and to turn it into crystalline sugar, this is an elaborate science, to refine that juice and turn it into crystallized sugar. If you go to a sugar refinery, its like an oil refinery. Smokestacks everywhere. This was all based upon, you know, the 2015 version of what the portuguese have developed, growing sugarcane easily. It grows well in tropical climates. It was first developed in the southern parts of asia. Is grows easily on its own. As long as you keep the rats gnawing on it. The thing about sugarcane is it has a 1416 month growing cycle. You cannot plant it anywhere they gets frost. The trick is taking the raw juice out of the plant and turning it into something people want to eat. This is what the portuguese innovate, building upon older technology. The processing. This is what we are seeing here in this engraving. A sign of how important sugar was to europeans, that they would take time to engrave and show actual manufacturing. They were interested in the technology, interested as an enterprise. The process of making sugar is shown here on the slide. Back here, we had sugarcane growing in these tall rows. Its being cut. The thing is, once you cut it, you have two or three hours to use it or it will dry up. You have grown it for nothing. Once it is cut, you have to rush it immediately to some sort of crushing mill to squeeze the juice out. This is a portuguese innovation. This vertical roller mill, these three cylinders are tightly pushed together. They roll against each other. You feed the stalk into it. It runs down a trough. The tricky part begins when you have to start refining it. At each stage, this removes a certain impurities. As you boil, this is also supervised by a skilled tradesperson called the boiler. This person is a master chef, someone who can see the juice bubbling and skims the impurities, leaving the good stuff. Knows the exact moment when the juice has to go from one kettle to the next. Burned, youugar is take it off the last fire and leave it to cool. So this is a laborintensive process. It requires massive amounts of labor. You have people running cane to the mill from the fields. People and animals turning it constantly. You have to have people cutting firesod and stoking the to keep the kettles burning. You cannot take a break. You have to have people hauling sugar from place to place, juice from place to place. This is a laborintensive business. It is aroundtheclock. And then, once its done, after all this work, all this juice, all this boiling, you have a loaf of sugar. One third of which has too much it,sses, and you cannot use and you have one pound of good raw sugar in the middle. It has to be refined again to turn to white sugar. The molasses can be distilled and made into rum. Just a kind of recoup money out of the waste product. This is sugaring on the brazilian coast. In the 1500s, you get more and more towards this system. Two things should jump out about this. One, you need a lot of labor. Two, this is a complicated technology for the 1600s. This is not cheap to build or maintain. You have to have people that know how to make this kind of machinery to make it all work. It is expensive to start a sugar operation. But europeans loved sugar so much that people paid it to justify the expenses down the way. While cane is easy to grow, the mill needed large labor forces. This is hot, heavy work out in the fields planting and harvesting cane, so its simple but not easy. You need boilers, you need people to build and maintain the mills. You need carpenters and masons. It is expensive. Creating a plantation is pricey. You need a lot of land. You need a lot of labor. You need a lot of knowhow. You need a lot of material, a lot of skill. There are not a lot of mom and pop operations. What has developed in brazil, because it is so expensive, is kind of a mixed sugar economy. The portuguese, individual portuguese subjects, very few ever put together enough money to create a total system. What happens in brazil is some people can put together enough money to create the mill. Some have enough money for land and labor. Other people cant afford the land, but they can work has to as tenant farmers. And then, you have a mixture of rich mill owners, smaller farmers, and a mixture of slave labor from africa and from native americans, and Contract Labor making this all happen. Many of the elements were developed in brazil. They are not being put together into a total system yet. You have a mixture of medieval forms, Medieval Technology and modern technology. Is all kind of mixed together. But once you take this basic technology of sugar production and insert it into a different geography, the small Little Islands in the caribbean, the dynamics change enough that a different country with a different resource and a different level of investment money takes the stuff being developed in brazil slowly, and turns it in the span of a couple of decades, into the modern plantation system. That launches the rapid expansion of modern sugar development. We move from brazil to barbados, get the english involved. Thats where were heading. The presugar history of barbados matches that of virginia and new england. English companies are looking for places to plant colonists and make money. You have Small Companies putting together expeditions to settle in the caribbean. They are thinking they might grow something useful. Looking for something in these parts of the world that england cannot get. , these various Companies Settle a number of small islands. Barbados is one amongst them. Barbados was, in the long run, one of the most successful. It has to do with basically barbados, which just stuck out from the edge of everything. It wasnt occupied by anyone. No native americans, no french or spanish, just volcanic rock. Looking for an unoccupied space, they move in. There wasnt a lot inviting about the colony except for the tropical climate. For the first 20 years, barbados develops slowly. The company that offers head rights borrows from the virginia system. They overland. The english come, they settle the island. They slowly carve out small tobacco farms from the rain forest. Tobacco grows well. The kind of tobacco that made West Virginia successful was grown in the caribbean. Great, weve got a good. Two strains of congress well, so you develop these small farms. But they are not profitable. Virginia has already dominated the tobacco economy and is already overproducing tobacco to the point that the price has dropped. They are starting to glut the market. There is not a lot of profit in tobacco. There is some. Slowly, right, they create small, okayseeming farms. They import servants to help them form the field, give them more rights to grow tobacco. Some farms carved out of the rain forest slowly growing. That is the arc barbados is on, looking like a marginal colony for 20 years. Around 1640, all the forces of World History combined to create a significant but small event. Dutch ships come to barbados from brazil and bring the technology of making sugar to the english. Sugar is so valuable, the technology was closely guarded. In an early version of corporate espionage, some dutch folks take the technology and bring it to england. I will not go into detail, but this involved world wars. It involved wars between england and holland on one side with spain and portugal on the other. During these wars, the dutch conquer everything portugal had built. They took over portuguese trading posts in west africa, sugar plantations in brazil. The thing we want to focus on is the dutch bring the technology of how to make sugar to the english settlers of barbados around 1640. We are not clear on the date. We know it just happened around then. It is one of these significant events that no one sat down and recorded. It did not seem like a big deal at the time, but what a big deal it would become. The technology alone was not enough to change the island. But bringing that technology, that english space, links barbados to englands wealth and in a different way to economics. I promised last week we would economics unless we need to. But it is these tiny, mundane, economic decisions that transform slavery and so much of north america. What happens when the Technology Comes to barbados is an Investment Opportunity is created where one had not been before. The tobacco plantations of barbados were not turning out as profit. But, when english people realize they have a space that could grow sugar, and a space where they can mill sugar, thats a prime Investment Opportunity. What happens when this Technology Comes to barbados is that all the pieces come together. Theres a settler class. There are people on the island that have established it as english domain. Youve got a small group of tobacco farmers with established credit and connections with england. Barbados has a reputation as a place that is secure. It hasnt been burned by the spanish in the past 20 years. It seems like a relatively safe space for the money to go. It has access to the valuable technology the portuguese had developed, and through the dutch, they have an access point to west african labor. It has tapped into the west african slave market. You put that together with the most crucial ingredient of all, money, barbados explodes. Not overnight, but it is amazing how rapidly it happened. It takes time. But within 20 years, barbados has gone from an island with a few small farms growing slowly to the heart of an emerging modern plantation complex. Dominated by rich planters, producing sugar on a scale per and that is hard to fathom, the process transforms the laws and attitudes and ideas and beliefs of the english people around the atlantic. The process is slow. England buy up land in barbados, knowing if they can grow it they can mill it. Mills,nvestors build sometimes on land they own. New immigrants take up land as tenant farmers. They are quickly pushed out, because these investors putting money into the island expects to see a return on that investment. Because of the geography of barbados, because of the nature of investment, the emerging economy, this is tied closely to the emerging idea of capitalism. With all these factors coming together in a small space, these investors start pushing more and more to accelerate slavery on the island. Investment has a number of effects. One of the first, land values shoot up. People start buying all the land, theres not a lot of land to begin with. The price of the property shoots up. Automatically, the people that can afford to buy acreage see an increase in their wealth. Thats important. That money you can borrow against. Thats collateral, credit. Investment leads to more investment. But, if the land values rise, there is an incentive. Right . If you spent all of this money on some acreage in barbados, you want to make sure that you get enough money out of it to cover that investment. The land is expensive so you want to get as much out of it as possible. You do not want to waste valuable acreage with trees and wilderness or whatever might be on it. Get as much possible, planned as ant as much sugar as possible, the most viable crop in as many places as you can. This is where the colonialism begins. No one had yet developed the idea of the law of supply and demand, but they were feeling it. And, what happened is that these people plant more and more sugar and the price starts to come down. Which means that if you are going to recoup your investment you have to plant more and more. Alongside that, there is an effort to cut costs wherever you can, including labor. The incentives very quickly build in barbados. To turning from a system of farming that is based mostly upon servant labor to slave labor. The incentives build so quickly because it is such a small island. The value of land goes up so much and the cost is so big. What is so scary about slavery, the thing about the institution that should terrify us is how it made so much economic sense to people in the 1600s. That is the terrifying thing. Slavery was not an act of evil done by people for totally irrational reasons. It made a certain kind of sense. And that is the dangerous th