Slave trade and Sugar in the Caribbean

How the plantations got started

England was an emerging empire-builder at the start of the 18th century, with colonies in North America and the Caribbean that English merchants traded with. Early empire building was largely private: paid for and controlled by people and companies, not the government. Henry Morgan shows what that looked like.

1. 1A privateerCaptain Henry Morgan was a privateer: someone allowed by a government to attack and steal from ships at sea.
2. 2Gold into landHe invested his stolen gold in buying land in Jamaica, land that was suited to growing sugarcane.
3. 3PlantationsHe established plantations. This is early empire building in action: an enterprising individual doing the building, not the government.
4. 4Political powerLater he became acting governor of Jamaica. Individuals like Morgan, and companies like the Virginia Company in North America, set up plantations first and went on to gain political power.

What you need to know

• Early English empire building was largely private: individuals and companies, not the government, set up plantations and only later gained political power.
• Have a goYour classmate is totally sure the English government ran empire building from day one. What's your one-line reply?

  Early empire building was largely private: people and companies did it, and only later gained political power.

  Private means paid for or controlled by a person or company rather than the government, so the government was not the one building.

• Henry Morgan was a privateer, allowed by a government to attack ships, who put his stolen gold into Jamaican land for sugarcane.
• Plantations first relied on indentured servants, people made to work without pay for a set period of time.
• Many servants died in horrendous conditions and the harsh Caribbean climate, so colonists began buying enslaved Africans.
• Have a goTwo things happened: colonists began buying enslaved Africans, and many indentured servants died. Which one caused the other?

  The servants' deaths came first and pushed colonists to start buying enslaved Africans.

  The shift was a response to the deaths and the demand for labour, so the cause is the high death rate and the effect is the move to enslaved labour.

• Sugar produced by enslaved Africans became the basis of Atlantic traders' wealth, and the crop was nicknamed white gold.
• The Navigation Acts, part of a mercantilist framework, required goods to travel in English ships, so benefits flowed back to England.
• Customs duties, a tax on imported goods, earned the English monarchy a fortune from Jamaican sugar.
• Have a goA ship unloads Jamaican sugar at an English port. Who ends up with money from it, and what is that payment called?

  The English monarchy, through customs duties.

  A customs duty is a tax paid on goods that are imported, so it is charged as the sugar arrives, not when it is grown.

• More imports meant falling prices, so ordinary people could afford sugar in Britain's new mass consumer society.
• Profits were invested in canals, railways and ports, and historians still debate how far that paid for the Industrial Revolution.
• In 1807 Britain abolished the trade in enslaved people within its empire, yet enslaved labour in the American South still supported the cotton trade.

The big picture

Early English empire building was largely private, and in the Caribbean it meant plantations. When indentured servants kept dying, colonists began buying enslaved Africans, and sugar produced by their forced labour linked the Caribbean to British trade laws, taxes, shops and investment. Historians still argue about how much of this paid for the Industrial Revolution, and Britain's 1807 abolition ended only the trade in enslaved people within the British Empire.

⚠ Watch out

Mixing up indentured servants and enslaved Africans. An indentured servant was made to work without pay for a set period of time. The shift to buying enslaved Africans is what began the horrific suffering of the transatlantic slave trade, so don't use one word for both.

Memory hook

Sugar's trail: plantation, ship, duty, shop, canal. Forced labour at the start, wealth in Britain at the end.

Check yourself

Close the page and name three links from enslaved Africans' forced labour on sugar plantations to change in Britain. Which one is about a law?