1. Aim: What were the economic effects of European colonization in the Americas?

2. What was the value of a “blank slate” for the Europeans in the Americas?
No traditions to deal with - ordinarily it takes generations to force embittered peasants into factories and make them workers
Uprooted laborers could be forced into “agricultural factories” and mines
Created a new system of exploitation – capitalism without steam power

3. Sugar Production: Origins
INDIA 500 CE

4. Sugar Production: Too Dry
NORTH AFRICA 900 CE

5. Sugar Production: Too Cool
SPAIN 1300
SICILY 1200
CRETE CYPRUS 1200
NORTH AFRICA 90 CE
INDIA 500 CE

6. Which way to India?

7. Sugar Production - Just Right! But no labor force…
CANARY ISLANDS
CAPE VERDE

8. Sugar Production - Just Right! But no labor force…
CANARY ISLANDS
CAPE VERDE
Here It Is!

9. Sugar: Where else?
Hot and Humid

10. Why did the Europeans need African slaves
Why did the Europeans need African slaves? Why not get (free) European colonists? Why not use indentured servants?

11. Why did the Europeans need African slaves
Why did the Europeans need African slaves? Why not get (free) European colonists? Why not use indentured servants?
African slaves:
Used to tropical climate, used to Eurasian diseases, familiar with sugar as a crop
Only dispossessed labor can be forced into this new form of killing labor

12. Plantation slavery as a social system in the Caribbean
Mostly practiced in “killing” climates and conditions
Huge numbers of slaves :: white settlers
Sugar was produced in a factory-like setting

13. Sugar as a “Factory” Product: Hoeing for Planting

14. Sugar as a “Factory” Product: Harvesting

15. Sugar as a “Factory” Product: Gathering the Cane

16. Sugar as a “Factory” Product: The Mill

17. Sugar as a “Factory” Product: Sugar House

18. “The juice of the cane is conveyed in pipes from the mill to the boiling house. Here it is passed through a succession of coppers gradually increasing in heat. At each copper a Negro is placed to take off the scum as it rises, and when the temperature of that vessel has had its full effect, to remove it with a ladle into the next. “

19. Sugar as a “Factory” product
A sugar plantation is a factory, not a farm
Large numbers of workers
Division of labor
Grueling work; long hours and days; work takes place on the owners’ schedule
Europeans did not invent slavery, but Europe made slaves into “factory workers” and plantation field hands: “Unfree Laborers” in a capitalist enterprise

20. American Silver Production
Europe (1535) 3 million ounces
Potosi (1540) 1.5 million ounces
Potosi (1590) 10 million ounces (+ Mexico)

21. Silver as a “Factory” Product

22. America is where Europe “invents” capitalism
The accumulation of capital through the “super-exploitation” of Native Americans and Africans
Combining capital with a large labor force starts in the Americas
Large work-places based on division of labor and a class structure