Effects Of The Sugar Revolution

The Caribbean is a large region consisting of the Caribbean Sea the islands within and surrounding coasts. The massive range of space carries twenty-eight islands nations and over seven thousand individual islands. This tropical place is a well-known, vastly diverse area representing the harsh effects of slavery, racism, colonialism and plantation. The overall process of the eliminating slavery was unfortunately obstructed by the increase demand of growing the Caribbean industries. The sugar industry, agricultural industry and the mining industry were three of the main industries that held back the improvement of slavery. The revolution had fundamental implications for all aspects of the enconomy, society and government. When the slave trade …show more content…
For example Barbados had over 150 square mines of land waiting to be made into plantations. The Kings as well as Royal family had a demand for sugar cane, which made them invested into the slave trade. Barbados used this tactic to employ over 80 percent of the slave population in their country where almost 175 plantations were placed throughout the small island. They were “the purported home of sugar revolution, was denued of almost all its native vegetation as early as 1665”. (Higman, 106) Some of these plantations even ranged over 500 acres. At this time Brazil was another country that had a large demand for sugar plantations in which needed slave labor to fulfill their needs. Brazil found it hard to generate a large slave industry because there was an outbreak of small pox in the country, which largely affected the slave force. This led them to reaching out to the Caribbean where they employed many Caribbean’s for their labor work of the plantations. Today, Brazil is one of the largest growing plantations that still exist as now they export coffee as well as sugar at a fast growing rate. The fast pace and hard work that the slaves had to face unfortunately set back their life expectancy about sixteen years from the day they started working on the plantation. The sugar cane industry had “the heaviest …show more content…
They felt they were being treated unfairly as slaves. They were forced with spending long hours on their feet in the blazing sun and supervised constantly by overseers who were not afraid to use a whip. These plantations relied completely on the slave force concentrating on the profitability of a crop. Rebellions began because the slaves were fed up with the harsh conditions they were forced to work upon. It was in 1806 in Haiti where a peaceful rebellion was done where slave owners responded by offering improving working conditions or food and potential freedom. Even though the Haitian rebellion was successful many were not. For example The Baptist war started as peaceful protest ended in a ‘bloody uprising and a death of 600 slaves’. (Andrews, 2013) It was very unfortunate that this had to happen because all the slaves wished for was rates lowered and wage benefits such as crops from themselves and family. It made slavery seem less appealing. This is todays society would be completely acceptable to ask for however in this era it is a lot to ask for. Due to the first rebellion in the Barbados the code 1661 was created to provide legal protection. The code was set to give the slaves one set of clothing each-year however no standards based on the right to life were made. The Masters still in complete control of the slaves and could do whatever they wished to them, including whipping them. This was very