Some try to rationalize the existence of African slaves as necessary to do work that Europeans could not do in a tropical environment where heat and disease killed so many. Many forget, in the time before central heating, winter cold was as fatal as summer heat. Before men discovered germs, diseases killed everywhere and life was short: Richard Ligon arrived in Barbaros during a yellow fever epidemic and in London during the plague.
We also tend to forget the nature of farm work before John Deer and Cyrus McCormick. When sugar cane was introduced into Barbados as a cash crop in the 1640's, there was little about the cultivation and milling that was something indentured servants weren’t already doing.
Most of the labor was used to clear land, plant canes, keep away weeds, and harvest. The work was hard, but it probably wasn’t any worse that what white men were already doing, and continued to do into the twentieth century in the American south, for tobacco.
The harvested canes were taken to a mill where cut up pieces were crushed by rollers and the juice collected. The rollers were turned by oxen who walked an endless circle. The mill required men who understood machinery well enough to keep it clean and repair it when something broke. These, no doubt, were some of the skilled trades the Portuguese recruited from Europe.
The mill operation also required men who understood how to raise, train, and work animals. Some of the indentured servants, especially those with some knowledge of the agricultural trades, probably already knew this, and would have considered it a better job than working in the fields.
The third step was entirely new - the boiling of extracted syrup until sugar precipitated out. The heat was intense in the enclosed buildings where a fire was kept stoked to keep the liquid cooking. However, the actual work of skimming the impurities from the pans and transferring the liquid from pan to pan had to be easier than clearing land or harvesting cane.
The problem with sugar, or for that matter tobacco and cotton, is that it needs more labor than one man can provide, but are only profitable if labor costs are low. Families didn’t exist in Barbados at the time sugar was introduced, so small landowners couldn’t rely on their sons. Partnerships were usually only a few men, who could not produce enough to live well.
The problem for the would-be planter was how to avoid the trap of the local construction contractor whose costs are fixed and rise when work increases. They could and did make small improvements in the process, but not enough to cover the costs of production and debt.
When Ligon arrived in 1647, men were just mastering the first two steps. He noted, they originally cut the cane too soon, when it was a year old, but learned to wait three more months. They also needed help knowing the best way to plant the canes and harden the rollers. These things they could, and did, learn from men who traveled to Brazil.
They were still having problems with distillation. He said many of the early barrels were more molasses than sugar, and weren’t worth shipping to England. By the time he left, three years later, many had solved that problem as well.
Once men had mastered the production of sugar and all producers were equally proficient, it meant the only ways men could increase their profits was to increase production by lowering the price of land and labor. The one led to the perpetual demand for cheap or free land. Within years, men were leaving Barbados for other islands.
The other led to the search for cheap, reliable labor. Wage labor was impossible in a frontier society where men could only get food and shelter from plantation owners. Indentured servants had proved a problem, and became a bigger problem for large landowner when they were free and competing for land and export markets on a small island. Convicts would be tried, but they were probably even less tractable. Indians flat refused to work, or died when they were imported from other places.
Slaves, seen through the prism of visits to Brazil and the enthusiastic advice of Dutch traders willing to provide them at a price, seemed like the only innovation that might break the cost cycle and provide reward for effort. What now is seen as a great moral wrong, then was seen as progress.
Notes:
Ligon, Richard. A True and Exact History of the Island of Barbados, 1657, much extracted.
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