Chapter 18 Plantation Agriculture in the Colonial Americas The first cash crop in the Caribbean was tobacco. By the 17th century, the Lesser Antilles were under Dutch, English, and French rule, and their private companies brought indentured servants from Europe to work in the tobacco plantations. The Dutch controlled northeastern Brazil from the 1620s to the 1650s, and there they introduced sugar cane plantations with African slaves. When the Portuguese recaptured that part of Brazil, Dutch planters introduced this system to the Caribbean. This system required land and slaves, and so indentured servants went to North America instead. Harvesting sugar cane is extremely harsh and physically strenuous. Milling the cane is an industrial process, requiring speed and discipline. The cane was crushed or ground thanks to animal or water power. The juice was then boiled until it turned into molasses, which can be distilled into rum or crystallized into sugar. Sugar cane plantations brought extensive deforestation, between the need for land and firewood. As plantations developed slaves lived in barracks, but they later could be allowed to live in cabins in family units. Some cabins might have vegetable gardens, which were tended on rare days off. Otherwise the typical meal was salted beef or salted cod, accompanied by root vegetables. 1
Work was so harsh and demanding that there was rarely a chance for family life, and life expectancy was very short. The average slave only lived about 5 years after arriving from Africa. Except for British North America, more slaves died every year than were born. This explains why the slave trade always had to continue. In Catholic colonies, slaves were baptized and expected to be Catholic. However, traditional African religions survived, but in a new form, blended with Catholicism. Catholic saints fused their identities with African gods, and prayers and sacrifices before a saint's image were really meant for the African god. This cultural fusion is known as syncretism. Examples: vodun in Haiti and santeria in Cuba. Slaves were property, and they could be physically punished, tortured, or mutilated if they disobeyed or tried to escape. Slave resistance could include laziness, sabotage, or running away. Runaway slaves were called maroons. In areas that had remote, inaccessible hinterlands (like Jamaica, Brazil, Colombia, the Guianas), runaway slaves formed communities where they followed African customs. 2
Atlantic Economy Europeans created and controlled an Atlantic economy by the 18th century. Europeans manufactured goods and sold them in Africa and the Americas. Africans sold gold, ivory, and slaves and bought guns, metal hardware, cloth from India, rum, and tobacco. Slaves were taken to the Americas in the Middle Passage. American exports (precious metals, cash crops) were then taken to Europe. Europeans completely controlled the American side of this trading network. Africa and the Slave Trade Most slaves were prisoners of war, and therefore male. The sale of slaves was in the hands of Africans. States in West Africa, like Dahomey, Oyo, and Asante, grew in strength and wealth by selling slaves to Europeans. They used guns bought from Europeans to expand their territories. Europeans had trading outposts and forts on the coast, with the permission of African rulers, but Europeans had not yet colonized Africa. Because of disease, Europeans could not hold territory in most of Africa. The only permanent European settlement was at the Cape of Good Hope. Dutch had settled there in the 17th century to resupply ships traveling to and from the Indian Ocean. Because South Africa was not tropical, they could raise European crops and animals, and there were no tropical diseases. The native Khoisan hunter gatherers could not resist European encroachment. 3
Muslim slave trade from Africa continued in the early modern period. Arab merchants crossed the Sahara for slaves, or traded along the Swahili coast. Songhai was a Muslim state in the West African Sahel which traded with Muslim North African Arabs. It was defeated by an Arab army in 1591. 4
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