Aim: What were the Economic Effects of European Colonization

in the Americas?

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

• Displaced laborers could be forced into agricultural factories and mines

• Created a new system of exploitation from scratch – capitalism w/o steam power

Sugar Production: Origins

INDIA 500 CE

Sugar Production: Too Dry

NORTH AFRICA 900 CE

Sugar Production: Too Cool

INDIA 500 CE

NORTH AFRICA 90 CE

SICILY 1200 CRETE

CYPRUS 1200

SPAIN 1300

Which way to India?

Sugar Production - Just Right!But no labor force…

CANARY ISLANDS

CAPE VERDE

Sugar Production - Just Right!But no labor force…

CANARY ISLANDS

CAPE VERDE Here It Is!

Sugar: Where else?

Hot and Humid

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

Plantation slavery as a social system in the Caribbean

• Mostly practiced in “killing” climates and conditions

• Huge numbers of slaves :: white settlers

Sugar as a “Factory” Product: Hoeing for Planting

Sugar as a “Factory” Product: Harvesting

Sugar as a “Factory” Product:

Gathering the Cane

Sugar as a “Factory” Product: The Mill

Sugar as a “Factory” Product: Sugar House

The juice of the cane is conveyed in pipes from the mill to the boiling house, where it is converted into sugar. 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.

Sugar as a “Factory” product

• A sugar plantation is a factory

• Europeans did not invent slavery, but Europe made slaves into factory workers and plantation field hands: “Unfree Laborers” in a capitalist enterprise

American Silver Production

• Europe (1535) 3 million ounces

• Potosi (1540) 1.5 million ounces

• Potosi (1590) 10 million ounces (+ Mexico)

America is where Europe “invents” capitalism

• The accumulation of capital through the super-exploitation of Native Americans and Africans

• Combining capital with labor starts here

• Large-scale work-places based on division of labor and a class structure