Jamaican cane fi eld, where the most overworked and abused could drop dead after seven years
QUESTION: We often hear about slavery in America, what was slavery like in South and Central America? How was it different? (Different products, practices, conditions, etc.)
slaves working on sugar plan-tations were, compared with other working-age slaves in the United States, far less able to resist the common and life-threatening dis-eases of dirt and poverty,’’ wrote Tadman in a 2000 study published in the American Historical Review. Life expectancy was less like that on a cotton plantation and closer to that of a Jamaican cane fi eld, where the most overworked and abused could drop dead after seven years.
I didn't know sugar plantation labor was more deadly than cotton labor. I wonder what the conditions of Jamaican slaves were like. Why did they have a lower life expectancy than American slaves?
It was the introduction of sugar slavery in the New World that changed everything. ‘‘The true Age of Sugar had begun — and it was doing more to reshape the world than any ruler, empire or war had ever done,’’
This is an interesting assertion that sugar is so impactful on history. This expands upon thinking about how goods, especially localized natural resources have shaped history. It reminded me of the rubber trade in Central Africa and South America in the late 19th, early 20th century.
The United States makes about nine million tons of sugar annual-ly, ranking it sixth in global pro-duction. The United States sugar industry receives as much as $4 billion in annual subsidies in the form of price supports, guaranteed crop loans, tariff s and regulated imports of foreign sugar, which by some estimates is about half the price per pound of domestic sugar. Louisiana’s sugar-cane industry is by itself worth $3 billion, generating an estimated 16,400 jobs
This is interesting modern day context. I didn't know the US was such a large sugar manufacture. I always assumed that, at least in the past, it was produced in more tropical climates such as the Caribbean.