Slavery in the Caribbean

 

Thousands of Africans were taken to be slaves in the West Indies. These are a chain of islands in the Caribbean Sea. In 1492 Christopher Columbus was the first European to reach these islands. However, he thought he was actually near India so he called the islands the West Indies. He also mistakenly called the natives living there 'Indians'. Soon European nations claimed that they owned these islands in what they called the 'New World'. They argued about which country was to control the different islands. Some islands changed hands several times.

 

Rum and slavery

 

Many important crops could be grown that were much in demand in Europe. Soon natives were labouring to grow tobacco in St Kitts and sugar, often known as 'white gold', in Barbados. In 1600 the Spanish invented a new drink, rum, made from sugar, and it became very popular in Europe. There were not enough local natives and so the sugar planters began to bring in African slaves. Without these slaves they could not expand production and increase their profits. The slaves were made to work on the plantations growing the sugar-cane. Then they turned the cane into a thick syrup called molasses. In turn the molasses was made into rum to be sold in Europe.

 

Life for a slave was not only brutal but usually short as well. Slaves were cheap and sugar was a very profitable crop. Slaves were thought of as property and so the owners thought they could do what they liked with them. Dead slaves could be easily replaced. On the island of Antigua, it was said that slaves rarely lived for more than nine years after their arrival. What mattered to the white overseers who ran the plantations was to make the slaves work as hard as possible and to keep tight control over them. This was often done by vicious punishments. Overseers thought that with these methods more sugar would be produced even if some slaves died.

 

Supplying the growing population in Europe with sugar and rum was very profitable. Many plantations were owned by landlords who lived in England and never visited the West Indies. They employed overseers to run them. So long as they made a good profit they did not worry about the condition of the slaves.

 

Nigel Smith: Black peoples of the Americas; Oxford University Press, 1992/2000, page 14 f.