Sugar and Slaves

In the U.S, we are all spoiled. We live in a world where almost everything we consume and buy is made by someone else in another country. Unfortunately we are living in a "profit-based international market in which people produce what they do not consume, and consume what they do not produce," (WEISNER). It was not until last year where I actually stepped back and thought about the things I was consuming. My friend told me she refused to buy the "iPhone" because the people that were making the phones had horrible labor conditions and were really poor. She made the choice to not be a part of Apple products. By this time I already had an iPhone, iPod and Macbook, so there was not much I could do. This made me wonder what else have I bought and am not aware of the working conditions and/if slave labor that is used to make the product. Today we consider "drugs"; cocaine, alcohol meth and many more. Colonial empires and Europeans considered their drugs to be coffee, tea, tabacco, and sugar. These were all grown naturally in a way and the demand for these "drugs" were all in high demand around the same time. The point is, when somethings ir rare or new to a society, they produce different effect on people. Sugar was grown in many different part of the world like; South Asia, the Caribbean, China and many other places. It was often used in Europe as a medical substance. History does in fact repeat itself because Marijuana is also grown in different parts of the world today, and now it is also offered for "medical use". Black labor for white sugar began in the late fourteen hundreds. They brought slaves from Africa to work in Brazil and also in the Caribbean. It was not until the eighteenth century that people from all classes began to use sugar the right way, as a sweetener. The transition from the high demand luxury of having sugar went to mass commodity was done. People of middle-class began to use sugar in coffeehouses. By the late eighteen hundreds, sweetened tea was spread through all classes of British society. At one point, drinking tea and having sugar was no longer an image of being wealthy, but a sign of poverty and lack of proper vitamin and meal consumption. 

It was interesting looking at the chart "Sugar and Slaves" because for the most part, slave importation to Barbados and Jamaica increased between sixteen-fifty to the seventeen hundreds dramatically. Reading about the slaves of Barbados was interesting because the person is talking in first person. They saw the negros not so much as humans, but mostly like working animals that were lucky on some days and were fed "...food..."... it was not seen as inhumane, and it was very much normal to observe how the slaves worked so hard for them while they sat back and made their profit. At times, they were even thought of as being "spoiled by the English". There are also assumptions of the slaves someday taking over and killing of Christianity but since slaves are so in "awe" by being hard workers and not being rebellious enough, they would not attempt to escape. Another reason that I had not though about was how some slaves could not communicate with each other since they were from different countries in Africa. I found this reading pretty easy and very informative. I also think it was a bit too long of a read on top of all of our other homework.