Why Is Sugar Slavery Important

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Initially sugar was a luxury item, used for medical purposes, as a spice, and a sweetener of course. That is up until the 16th century, when sugar became a necessity due to its abundance and lower prices. Growth of sugarcane in Spain and Portugal expanded into the Caribbean and parts of South America. While the industry was growing it came with some costs, one being slavery. Sugar became the focus of an industry, a sugar complex that combined the sugar plantations, the slave trade, long-distance shipping, wholesale and retail trade, and investment finance. Sugar slavery was the key component in what historians call The Trade Triangle, a network whereby slaves were sent to work on New World plantations, the product of their labor was sent to a European capital to be sold and other goods were brought to Africa to purchase more slaves. Triangular trade usually evolves when a region has export commodities that are not required in the region from which its major imports come. By the middle of the 19th century, more than 10 million Africans had been forcibly removed to the New World and distributed among the sugar plantations in Brazil and the Caribbean. White Gold, as British colonists called it, was the engine of the slave trade that brought millions of Africans …show more content…
Britain lost its 13 American colonies to independence in part because its military was busy protecting its sugar islands, many historians have argued. As opposed to the slaves working plantations in the U.S. South, Africans on Caribbean sugar plantations outnumbered their European owners by a wide margin. The British planters lived in constant fear of revolt and demanded soldiers for protection. Several decisive battles of the Revolutionary War would have turned out differently had Britain thrown its full might behind the war, experts