Transatlantic Slave Trade and Sugar Production

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With the creation of large sugar plantations in colonized lands during the 18th century, sugar production and slave labor began to rise to meet with an insatiable demand in Europe. In chapter six of the Atlantic World, Egerton first discusses the slave trade through the eyes of Al Haji Seku, the oldest member of the Darbo Clan in West Africa. I felt this to be eye opening as through Darbo’s perspective the slave trade was utilized to gain goods and express a type of authority in dealing with Europeans through specific terms for cede goods. Europeans would be more than willing to meet with the terms in order to gain much needed laborers that would be used to aid in the growing sugar production across the Atlantic. Natives had at first been seen as ideal for labor, however throughout the Americas native populations were rapidly diminishing due to forced migration and especially disease. By 1820, more Africans crossed the Atlantic to populate North and South America than did Europeans (Egerton 187). The transatlantic slave trade was introduce in the Americas by Portuguese planters trying to find laborers to meet with their labor needs for sugar production. Immigration problems and harmful tropical environments prevented Portuguese/Europeans workers from completing tasks which lead to the idea of using African slaves from Portuguese colonies in West Africa.

I found it interesting that sugar production went hand and hand with the rise of African slaves in the Americas. Sugar plantations filled with slaves were a part of Spanish American life since after Columbus’s arrival. Eventually the Dutch, English, and French got in on the transatlantic slave trade and sugar trade. Europeans seeking slaves went down the Atlantic coast of Africa to meet with African slave traders. The Atlantic sugar plantations would transform the lives of 4 to 5 million African slaves (Egerton 203). As the demand for sugar changed the lives for Europeans, natives, and Africans in the Americas so did it change society in Europe. In Sidney Mintz’s, “Sweetness and Power,” she elaborates on the concept that English society began to add new meanings to sweetened substances in everyday life to fit with the rise of consumption and production. Through the ideas brought up by my colleague Hunter Loya, there was a growing colonial obsession with sugar cane as the English people in particular had a growing dependence on sugar. By the mid nineteenth century, the English owners of sugar production/trade immersed great fortunes and had become even more solidly attached to the centers of power in English society at large (Mintz 168). Sweetened substances were slowly introduced in ceremonies and rituals as a way to commemorate the event and express economic power. Weddings, funerals, and births all began to be celebrated with sugar infused confections.

Overall, I felt that the concept of growing production in sugar and the need for African slaves leading to great changes in the Americas and Europe to be very insightful. The demand for such sweetened substances would aid in the development of transatlantic trading which would further modernize the Americas and Europe at the great expense of the natives.

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