“Molasses to rum to slaves,
Oh, what a beautiful waltz.
You dance with us,
We dance with you.
Molasses and rum and slaves.”
(Lyrics from a 1969 Broadway musical, 1776.)
I highly recommend
this fascinating book
which traces the
evolution of the
sugar cane industry
in the Caribbean and
the how the
availability of cane
sugar transformed
western diets.
Sugar cane production occurs throughout the humid Tropic and Sub-Tropics. The economies of many countries in the Caribbean
depend on sugar exports. However, with the large production of large countries like China, India and Brazil, Caribbean growers face
a lot of competition and low prices.
This map is
based on data
from 1900, but
the pattern
shown persists.
The sugar cane
economy
continues to
predominate in
the region.
Galloway, J.H. 1996. "Botany in Service of Empire: The Barbados Cane-Breeding Program and the Revival of the Caribbean Sugar Industry, 1880s-1930s",
Annals of the Association of American Geographers, vol. 86, no. 4, 1996, pp. 682-706.
Sugar mill in my home state, Louisiana, where growers who receive government subsidies produce sugar
that competes with sugar produced by un-subsidized Caribbean growers on global markets.
Sugar cane is a tall grass. After being cut, it’s brought to the mill for a lot more
cutting and grinding and washing, and then crystallization.
Bagasse, ground-up cane fiber, is a byproduct
of the grinding. Included among its uses are
livestock feed, and to make particle board.
My Guyanese-American friend, who is of East Indian ancestry, showed
me around this sugar mill. His family immigrated to the US from the
Caribbean to work in Louisiana’s sugar industry.
This man is a sugar
chemist of Haitian
ancestry. He emigrated
from a Caribbean sugar
producing country to
work in Louisiana’s
sugar industry.
Learn the
three
passages
and
products
that linked
this
Triangular
Trade.
Source: H. Hobhouse. 1986. Seeds of Change: Five Plants that Transformed Mankind. Harper & Row, New York.
More than 1/2 of
African slaves
were brought to
the Americas to
produce sugar
cane.
This forced migration of African slaves made the Caribbean a largely African-American region, which persists. However, notice
how the French and British islands had much larger African-American populations in comparison to their white populations, than
in Hispanic Latin America. This is because the sugar plantation model was centered in French and British colonies. Spanish
colonies, in general, did not emphasize export agriculture.
Map from Charles
Mann’s book,
1493, published
by Alfred A. Knopf
in 2011.
Introduction of the sugar cane plantation model resulted in the emergence of one of
Middle America’s primary regions: The Rimland, which includes the Caribbean and
the Atlantic coast of Central America.