"The experiment begun in 1492 was accompanied by a new relationship with the world and with each other, based on the novel idea that the prosperity of human societies lay in the submission of a wild and free nature to the rational act of exploitation. From then on, the entire living world was put to work, and in this first planetary empire, people, plants and animals became commodities circulating from one corner of the hemisphere to the other."

wrote Sylvie Laurent in her book "Capital et race : Histoire d'une hydre moderne"

#wilderness #progress #SylvieLaurent #capitalism #extractivism #capture #appropriation #grabbing #marchandization #Discovery #encounter #ChristopheColomb #Colomb #plantations #Antilles #America #Americas #history #slavery #agroBusiness #agriculture #NewWorld #quote #quotes #beliefs #belief #labour #technoCriticism

Adam Smith in 1776:

"The planting of sugar and tobacco can afford the expense of slave cultivation. The raising of corn, it seems, in the present times, cannot. In the English colonies, of which the principal produce is corn, the far greater part of the work is done by freemen. […] In
our sugar colonies, on the contrary, the whole work is done by slaves, and in our tobacco colonies a very great part of it. The profits of a sugar-plantation in any of our West Indian colonies are generally much greater than those of any other cultivation that is known either in Europe or America; and the profits of a tobacco plantation, though inferior to those of sugar, are superior to those of corn, as has already been observed. Both can afford the expense of slave-cultivation, but sugar can afford it still better than tobacco. The number of negroes accordingly is much greater, in proportion to that of whites, in our sugar than in our tobacco colonies."

https://media.bloomsbury.com/rep/files/primary-source-144-adam-smith-the-wealth-of-nations-on-slavery.pdf

In 1776, Scotsman Adam "Smith noted that the British West Indian sugar plantations were so profitable they their returns from rum exports, a byproduct of sugar production, paid for the entire overhead expenses of a sugar plantation. As far as Smith was concerned, this was an achievement without parallel in eighteen-century British imperial agriculture."

(excerpt from Seymour Drescher’s book "The Mighty Experiment: Free Labor versus Slavery in British Emancipation")

#AdamSmith #economics #economy #slavery #chattelSlavery #WestIndies #agriBusiness #agriculture #sugar #Caribbean #lineofColor #systemicRacism #capitalism #whiteSupremacy #rum #accumulation #transatlantic #trade #slaveTrade #deportation #economics #BritishEmpire #BritishIsles #Tobago #Jamaica #Barbados

In "Slavery, Capitalism and the Industrial Revolution", two researchers, Maxine Berg and Pat Hudson, place slavery and the plantation system at the heart of the development of the British economy in the 18th century. They argue that it was a determining factor in the particular development of British capitalism and the industrial revolution.

Still slightly behind the Portuguese in the deportation of Africans at the end of the 17th century, between 1751 and 1775 the British accounted for nearly 43% of the transatlantic trafficking, compared with 27% for the Portuguese and 17% for the French.

The aim was to supply the huge plantations on the many British-controlled islands in the West Indies, such as Jamaica and Barbados, where coffee, tobacco and, above all, sugar were produced. The latter product was at the heart of the primitive capitalist machine set in motion by chattel slavery.

#humanTrafficking #slavery #capitalism #WestIndies #BritishEmpire #deportation #sugar #Caribbean #book

The two authors explain how European consumption and tastes were changed so that plantation production could deliver to a huge and ever-growing market. ‘As the supply of sugar grew, so did its popularity,’ the authors summarise. Between 1700 and 1783, sugar production in the British West Indies quadrupled.

This phenomenon came about through two channels that are familiar to the current mechanisms of capitalism: the appeal of luxury consumption that has become affordable and the addiction to the product itself, which becomes a ‘necessity’.

The imposition of sugar in the diets of Europeans, including the poorest, during the 18th century was, in a way, the first victory of marketing in support of mass production. It reminds us that demand and consumption are often the consequences rather than the causes of production choices.

#innovation #addiction #luxury #needs #growth #diet #food #publicHealth #massProduction #sugar #dessert #desserts

The book shows is that this culinary revolution, designed to ensure the profitability of slave-based sugar cane plantations, had a knock-on effect on the economy as a whole. It initially fuelled demand for sweetened beverages from other slave plantations (coffee, chocolate) or from Asian trade, such as tea.

The sugar craze also benefited other sectors in Britain itself, such as ceramics, retail, financial intermediaries and port infrastructure. All these sectors, in turn, fuelled the rest of the economy, particularly metal and mineral production.

What Maxine Berg and Pat Hudson show is the domino effect of this slave-based industry on the overall capitalist and industrial dynamic in the centre country. This dynamic is not always immediately apparent. But the authors highlight, for example, how this revolution in consumption was a key element of the ‘industrious revolution’, a notable change in attitudes to work that enabled the industrial revolution.

#sugar #infrastructure

The authors note, ‘the desire for a new variety of goods led to gradual changes in the behaviour of ordinary households in Western Europe’. Gradually, in order to afford the now accessible luxury of sugar, the subsistence economy was abandoned in favour of wage labour. People accepted working longer and harder to acquire these goods, which, according to accounts from the late 18th century, had become essential needs.

But How were the products made?

#work #needs #materialHistory #history #Europe #wages #accumulation #capitalism #primitiveAccumulation #society #sociology #18thCentury #UK

To meet this artificial demand, the plantation system laid the foundations for the future capitalist organisation of labour and production. The sugar industry at the time was a ‘synthesis of the field and the factory’, a veritable “agribusiness” that was ‘unlike anything known in Europe at the time’. Sugar cane juice had to be processed quickly after harvesting to produce sugar crystals and molasses, which, when distilled, produced rum, a product that would soon become popular on European markets as well.

Plantation farming was therefore an integrated system that required major innovations for the time in order to organise and improve production. The accounting system put in place made it possible to calculate yields more accurately and, as a result, to cut back on the ‘needs’ of slaves in terms of food, housing and clothing in order to extract as much value as possible.

#exploitation #whiteSupremacy #whiteFragility #chattelSlavery #industry #innovation #productivity

These accounting practices played a decisive role in the birth of capitalism and its evolution. ‘Standardised accounting made it possible to separate ownership from management, a separation that was still rare in British and European companies more than a century later,’ the authors point out.

Accounting also made it possible to strengthen control over the workforce and intensify its labour. The plantation system confirmed Marx's observation a century later: increased productivity goes hand in hand with deteriorating working conditions. ‘Working conditions worsen as management and technology improve,’ the book notes. Gradually, the plantations of the British West Indies in the 18th century came to resemble the large factories of the following century, with the added violence of the slave system, where those who resisted were whipped, beaten and hanged.

#marxistHistory #factory #farming #accounting #workingConditions #labour #workConditions #labor #humanRights #agriBusiness

The Atlantic trade ports, mainly Liverpool and Glasgow, developed a hinterland that supplied the manufactured goods needed for the triangular trade based on slavery, particularly textiles and metal products. This profoundly changed the economic geography of Great Britain.

Money from the metropolis was directed towards the needs of the plantations, then returned to England and Scotland to finance the sectors boosted by the triangular trade, but also to finance the state. The authors particularly emphasise that the demand for public debt from planters made it possible to structure new instruments that still form the basis of finance today and which enabled not only the essential state support for British capitalist development, but also the financing of the colonial wars that strengthened the plantation system.

(after Romaric Godin's recension in French of "Slavery, Capitalism and the Industrial Revolution", by Maxine Berg and Pat Hudson)

#Liverpool #Glasgow #triangularTrade

People domesticated sugar around 8,000 BCE in New Guinea. The technique of chemically refining sugar first emerged in India about 2,500 years ago, and this knowledge spread towards China, Iran, and the early Islamic worlds.

"By the fourteenth century, Cyprus and Sicily had become important Mediterranean producers of sugar for the Europeans. This success encouraged Europeans to expand the sugar industry to the Atlantic Islands, South America, and the Americas. By the time of Elizabeth I’s and James I’s rule, increasing amounts of sugar was brought from sugar plantations (engenhos) in Brazil. These engenhos demanded the enforced labour of indigenous peoples, and, increasingly, enslaved Africans, who would work in appalling conditions to crush the sugarcane, extract the juice, and boil this juice at a hot temperature to produce sugar molasses, which would be shipped to Europe in large barrels called hogsheads."

https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/education/resources/sugar/

#sugar #history #Brazil #raceMaking #racialization

(continued)

from the backcover of the book:

"The forces set in motion by the slave and plantation trades seeped into almost every aspect of the economy and society. In textile mills, iron and copper smelting, steam power, and financial institutions, slavery played a crucial part. Things we might think far removed from the taint of slavery, such as eighteenth-century fashions for indigo-patterned cloth, sweet tea, snuff boxes, mahogany furniture, ceramics and silverware, were intimately connected. Even London’s role as a centre for global finance was partly determined by the slave trade as insurance, financial trading and mortgage markets were developed in the City to promote distant and risky investments in enslaved people."

@bookstodon @histodons 🧶

#book #trade #trading #finance #London #slavery #investements #capitalism #chattelSlavery #deportation