Author: Dr. Shrout

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Reading this chapter reminded me of the article on the mende people from a few weeks ago. I think often times it is easy to think of the African people as primitive and less civilized because of the way they are portrayed that way by the Europeans. However, this article reinforces the idea that they were not. They had set up societies and systems. For example chapter 5 talks a lot about their so called secret societies and their purposes. They were used to deal with political and social aspects of their said village similar to groups in western societies (pg.94-95). Another interesting aspect to this chapter was how some of these ideas carried over to the nations where the slaves were taken. Some examples of this were basket weaving among the women (pg.93). Also the masonry group that was similar in many aspects to the secret societies in Africa (pg.101).

This is similar to what Kyle says in his post. Secret societies were not only important to African society but also important to the cultures that formed once they made it to their final destinations. Kyle gives and overview of what these societies were like, this is important to understand if one is going to understand African culture in their new destinations.

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Michael Gomez explains the roles that the Sierra Leone and the Akan played in the South of the Americas by the Europeans. These societies left a legacy on American soil with associations organized by gender and permeating all aspects of life. Beginning in the 17th century, English and Dutch traders began to create Forts for the Royal African Company (RAC) in 1719, these factories created warehouses and living quarters for both the slaves and owners. Early 17th to late 18th century, Dutch and English travelers in Sierra Leone created secret societies relating to Poro male and Bundu female societies. The secret societies were used in terms as “societies of men and women or male and female societies” are employed in the wide-ranging activities and multifaceted aspects of these institutions. (Chapter 5, Page 94-95). I think the reason secret societies were important because this helped resolve diplomatic and commercial stability between independent domains and villages along with formal education to help them function in their respected societies in their communities and they can be free of creating their own societies. One group became significant in the Poro and Sande societies, they were called the “Sandogo,” a powerful women’s organization that unites the female leadership of many extended household units and kinship group of the village. (Chapter 5, Page 96). I think having female leadership was important because it bought a female voice in both religion and a voice in their community. The relationship of the Akan society was very significant because it brought a spiritual nature of human beings and creates political organizations and connection between land, cultural, and social freedom as both tangible and spiritual for the future. (Chapter 5, Page 113).

This is similar to Hunter Loya’s post from Sidney Mintz and Chapter 6 in Atlantic World because enslaved Africans now could escape by creating spaces free from bondage and escaping into the American hinterland to create maroon colonies. I think having these maroon communities would help grow European politics and governments’ because having its own community, own territory, and can help create societies and interact with other people that were enslaved by Europeans.

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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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Once Europeans found a way to profit from American landscapes through agriculture and mining, labor was needed to make this dream into a reality. When indigenous and European work was not satisfactory, explorers and settlers turned to African forced migration and exploitation. Between 1540 and 1870, approximately 11 million Africans were forced to migrate to the Atlantic and were used for their labor. Integral to the economic success of the Atlantic and eventually the production of cotton in Southern United States. The mortality rate for crossing the Atlantic ocean alone was 12 to 15 percent, and 40 percent of slaves were transported to the Brazil, 37 percent to the West indies, 16 percent to Spanish America, and only 6 percent to what would become the United States (Egerton et al, 187). In her post, Diana Tran mentions that the large number of slaves in Brazil and the Caribbean was due to the lucrative success of sugar production, that Europeans were dependent on their labor and forced migration: “It was true, Europeans were making money without much of their own effort. Their fortune was cultivated with someone else’s labor and someone else’s land.” To me, this argument was insightful and eye opening because Tran successfully points out the backbone of American and Eurocentric success: the blood, sweat, and tears of the horribly treated.

According to Sidney Mintz, sugar was a miracle to Europeans, rich and poor. The sweetener was immensely satisfying and improved food conditions throughout all of Europe: “…it was symbolically powerful, for its use could be endowed with many subsidiary meanings” (Mintz, 186). Sugar was symbolically significant to Europeans, and as a result, the labor of exploitation of Africans was justified through White eyes. Economically, sugar was extremely profitable due to its social popularity in Europe, and in order to keep up with its mass desire, Europeans turned to the cruel and unusual treatment of African slaves, forcing them to migrate to Brazil, the Atlantic, and what is now the United States to economically benefit European society. To me, this is extremely disturbing but also not surprising. Systemic racism against people of color originates from the idea that Africans and other non-white peoples are inferior due to their original lack of Christianity, and their importance to the economic benefitting of Eurocentric society. Slavery is an unfortunate, yet integral part of the backbone of western success and domination. Without the forced migration of 11 million Africans, Europe and the United States would not be where they are today.

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The reading from chapter six of “The Atlantic World” focuses on the evolution of slavery in the slave trade and in the Americas. Hard labor on sugar and tobacco plantations was initially performed by indentured servants, but this was humiliating and tough work that Europeans did not want to do, and labor transitioned from servants to natives, to enslaved Africans. On the slave ships, enslaved persons faced many obstacles that affected their mortality rate. Some of these obstacles were sleeping on wooden floor while chained up and no air, unsanitary conditions such as constant closeness to other people along with fecal matter and vomit, dehydration, and severe beatings and harsh treatment from the captains and crew of their ships. At the same time, the captors did attempt to keep their cargo alive, mandating enslaved persons to clean the floors. In some cases musicians were brought on voyages to encourage the enslaved persons to dance. The seventeenth century saw the implementation of regulations on the slave trade. Some Europeans simply restricted punishments inflicted on slaves, others gave enslaved persons a few rights and a degree of humanness, while some determined which parent a child would inherit its freedom or bondage from.
The Chapter on Power from the Mintz reading discusses the power associated with sugar in the Americas. Power relating to sugar took the form of economic power, as sugar was highly demanded, but also a source of political power over other nations, and social power in that Europeans dominated the social structure built on the labors of enslaved persons. The importance of sugar changed over time for the Europeans. At first, it was a prized delicacy consumed only by the elite. This changed as sugar was mass produced, demand increased, and it became part of the average person’s diet.
Classmate Tyler Mendoza relates these readings with the Saltwater Frontier. This relation is that native Americans and Africans are often understood to be bystanders as the Europeans are primarily the drive in history. We know that the natives were very engaged, very advanced, more so than the Europeans in many ways. In Africa, the slave trade was dependent on other Africans selling enslaved persons in exchange for various items at different times.

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In Sidney Mintz’s “Sweetness and Power,” the author highlights the important impacts sugar had on societies, especially the British Empire. The reading suggests that sugar “became one of the most desired of all edible commodities in the [British] Empire” and “that the availability, and also the circumstances of availability, of sucrose” was “determined by forces outside the reach of the English masses themselves.” (166). Around 1650, sugar became such an important part to England’s power. With more of it being imported, it meant that economic and political forces would support “the seizure of colonies where cane could be grown and raw sugar manufactured” (167). Britain imported sugar so much that the price fell and yet the consumption continued to rise. Sugar was used in various ways for people of different backgrounds. It changed diets and made people grow conscious “in family budgets, and in the economic, social, and political life of the nation” (167).

“Chapter Six” of The Atlantic World focuses on the slave trade in the Americas during 1580 to 1780. The idea for salve labor was not something new. In the sixteenth century, Portuguese planters took African people to Brazil for labor. Slavery soon became racial. Portuguese immigrants could survive the tasks handed to them; however, it was humiliating to them to work alongside slaves, making this situation “a recurring pattern in the Atlantic world for as long as slavery lasted” (189). Slaves appeared on cane fields in about 1540, making them “nearly three quarters of the labor force of Brazil’s sugar mills” (189). The Dutch had a major hand in the growth of sugar and slavery in the Caribbean despite the area being under French and English possession. One the slave ships, men dominated the labor flows. However, many children were found on slave ships than European migrant ships because adolescents and young adults were “not at all likely to die over a period of one or two months under normal circumstances” (190). Male slaves were used to complete work on ships.

Both readings relate to one another. In Sidney Mintz’s reading, it focused on Britain’s economic, social, and political dependency on sugar. In The Atlantic World, it showed the history of how different countries went out and sought out the means to support their people. It showed the theme of commodification of enslaved people. In Shreshita Aiyar’s post, it brought up how the sugar boom influenced different parts of the Atlantic World. It showed the desperation of finding land to provide goods for their countries. This week’s readings only highlighted those needs.

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Both Mintz and the authors of The Atlantic World make the claim that the slave trade started primarily because of the necessity of labor in regards to sugar in the New World. While both readings discuss sugar and agree on the primary point, they deal with different aspects of the claim. Continuing from the previous chapter, The Atlantic World primarily discusses the population and economic aspects in the New World. Like the use of indentured servants, the need for cheap labor drove mass migration into the New World. The authors here point out that in one colony alone, Brazil, 4 to 5 million African slaves were affected by a forced migration to the New World (The Atlantic World 203). It is here that the authors argue that this change in population and demographics significantly altered the course of the New World. The authors also point out the economic necessity and benefit of the slaves, where a slave ship could alone account for $250,000 in human cargo (The Atlantic World 202). The economic benefits from slavery furthered the slave trade and allowed for the growth and expansion of European powers.

Mintz, on the other hand, specifically discusses the effects that sugar had on the Old World. Here, he argues that sugar was a driving force behind the changing economic and political power in Europe. In earlier recorded European texts, sugar was a very valuable and expensive commodity (Mintz 159). The rich used sugar to show their wealth and power, and it was not seen as a necessity or anything of particular use. However, Mintz points out that as sugar became more effectively farmed in New World plantations, its use changed as did its cost (Mintz 167). Soon sugar was introduced to many less wealthy Europeans who previously did not have access to it; many governments, such as the United Kingdom began to tax the consumption of sugar, which invariably changed the economy (Mintz 175). The additional power and economic benefit that came from sugar, Mintz argues, inevitably helped the expansion of the British Empire.

Both authors argue that the slave trade significantly altered both the New World and the Old World, and significantly changed the economic and political landscape of both regions. My colleague Derek Taylor brings up an interesting question in regards to whether slavery was dependent on sugar or sugar was dependent on slavery. Here he argues that sugar was the necessity and slavery was the means, and I partially agree. Using both of these sources, I believe that it is clear that at first sugar was dependent on slavery, but as time went on, slavery became dependent on sugar too. This mutual dependence was what caused a significant change in the economic and political landscape.

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Both Chapter 6 of the Atlantic World and Sidney Mintz’s Sweetness and Power make an interesting case about the power dynamics underpinning the slave trade and “sugar imperialism.” Atlantic World argues for the impact sugar plantations had on both political and economic developments in the Americas, whereas Sweetness and Power denotes their effect on consumption patterns in Europe. Both readings reflect the interconnected nature of the Atlantic. This begs further comparison to Vieira’s “The Sugar Economy of Madeira and the Canaries,” which discussed out how the sugar plantation model originated from Madeira and the Canary Islands and was exported to Portugese Brazil. Evidently, the trifecta of the Americas, Europe, and Africa were all linked by developments spurring from the emergence of the sugar plantation.

Egerton contends in Chapter 6 that the pull factor of labor demand for sugar plantations in Brazil and West Indies drew the core of the African slave trade from the interior of Africa to the African coast (Egerton, 192). Likewise, this shift of the core of the African slave trade galvanized demographic changes across the Atlantic. As my colleague Diana states in her own blog post, “the sugar revolution made the transoceanic slave trade the largest forced movement of human beings in history and the largest intercontinental migration.” This reflects a power dynamic touched upon in the previous chapter; European demand for labor in the Americas led to the wholesale migration or transplant of people to fulfill that demand.

Similarly, Mintz demonstrates the evolving symbolic meaning of sugar as it went from a luxury only attainable by British aristocrats to a common staple in the diet of commoners (Mintz, 152). This ensuing popularization of sugar among British laymen abetted the creation of wealth that came to be “attached to the centers of power in English society at large” (Mintz, 157). Concentration of wealth created by immensely profitable sugar in turn meant “the growing strength and solidity of the [British] empire and of the classes that dictated its policies” (Mintz, 157). This reflects another power dynamic, that of a plutocrat government with mercantilist sympathies, where crown and capital are inseparably interwoven.

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In the excerpts from Mitz’s work dealing with sugar, they discuss the rise in popularity of sugar in England and the various effects things that this influenced or was influenced by. Early in the reading, Mitz points out how English aristocrats saw sugar as a means of showing off their wealth. They then move on to talking about sugar islands, which ties into the second reading in this post, Chapter 6 of the Atlantic world. In chapter six of the Atlantic world, the focus is on the slave trade and slavery in the Americas, as the chapter title states. In this chapter, the authors discuss a number of things relating to slavery. These include things like how the sugar trade fed into the slave trade, where a large portion of slaves came from, and the passage from Africa to the Americas.

One of the new things that I learned about in these reading was in regards to slave resistance in the slave trade. In chapter 6 of the Atlantic World, there is a part that discusses the ways that slaves resisted their bondage. One major example is Maroon Settlements which were settlements where slaves would escape to. Hunter Loya also took an interest in this topic, where he noted that these settlements acted as a way for slaves to fight back against those that would enslave them. This point was very interesting to me as in most depictions/discussion of slavery there is only a tiny bit of talk about the ways in which slaves would fight back against their captors. It also got me thinking about how in this way Native Americans and African slaves have been misrepresented. Looking back at the article that dealt with the Salt Water Frontier, the author noted how many perceived the Natives as being onlookers who only became active with the arrival of Europeans. This ties into, at least in regards to my past education on the subject, natives and slaves being portrayed as not really taking action but instead being acted upon by Europeans. Whereas this chapter and the saltwater frontier article, highlight how that was not necessarily the case.

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