Sugar Changed the World

The title of Part 2 comes from Aronson and Budhos’s argument that life as a slave on Caribbean plantations was a literal Hell. With the colonization of the Americas by Europeans, sugar plantations were set up in the Caribbean and Brazil. Millions of Africans were brought across the Atlantic Ocean as slaves; 900,000 Africans were brought as slaves to the English Caribbean colonies of Jamaica and Barbados, which “were just two of the sugar islands” (32). With this colonization and the establishment of plantations, sugar became a major part of the world economy: “Between the 1500s and the 1800s, sugar drove the entire economy linking Europe, Africa, Asia, and the Americas. 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.” (35)

Among the slaves brought to Barbados to work on a sugar plantation was Olaudah Equiano. Because he was sickly, he did not work on the fields. However, he did learn to write and wrote an autobiography giving a first-hand perspective on life as a slave. Slaves had to work in the sugar fields or clearing the land for sugar cultivation.