Islands in the ocean
The cluster of sugar-producing Caribbean islands known as the West Indies inspired fierce rivalry among the European empires. Small in size, these islands were immensely profitable. By the end of the seventeenth century, English trade produced an annual revenue of £2 million sterling, about half of which came from the West Indies. A century later, William Pitt estimated the annual revenue from plantations in the West Indies at £4 million and the revenue from all other colonies at £1 million. Dalby Thomas, a slave trader and popular author, believed that every worker, black or white, on the sugar islands of the West Indies produced as much value as 130 workers in the British Isles. Before the American Revolution the revenue of the British West Indies was twice that of British America. The revenue from these tiny islands greatly exceeded the income from the Indian subcontinent. Adam Smith wrote without surprise: ‘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.’ 4
The anthropologist Sydney Mintz showed that the sugar plantation was a pre-industrial factory, which combined the field and the processing facility into a single enterprise. These large plantations, with up to 500 slaves on each, were organised differently from arable farms. They consisted of a series of specialised premises, and the product went from one to another as if on a conveyor belt. Hundreds of slaves worked in the fields while a minimum of twenty-five people, black and white, worked on the processing. While the former used only their machetes, the latter operated equipment that cost thousands of pounds. As in a factory, there was a division of labour; a worker didn’t own his tools and work was subject to a schedule. However, the work rhythm was defined by nature – by the crop’s tendency to spoil quickly and by dependence on the weather for all stages of production.
As with many factories, the economy of scale was crucially important here. The shift from tobacco to sugar entailed the enlargement of plantations and the ruin of many farmers. Small plantations were uneconomic; the need for rapid processing meant that a large workforce was needed. The production process didn’t involve deep specialisation as was the case with grain, where the farmer owned the field and the miller owned the mill. Unlike grain, the raw cane was unsuitable for transportation and needed primary processing on the spot. The natural characteristics of a raw material not only defined the biology of its cultivation and the chemistry of its processing – they also shaped the institutions that specialised in it. Europe believed that it was developing the colonial world in its own image, spreading farming skills to the Americas and the Indias. In fact, the colonies, with their commercial factorias and specialised slave labour, purged of tradition and obedient to instrumental rationality, were true ‘laboratories of modernity’.
Unlike the proto-industrial treatment of sugar and cotton, the primary processing of tobacco involved typical agricultural processes: harvesting, cleaning, drying, packing. When the first colonists grew tobacco on smallholdings in the West Indies, their workforces were not slaves but hired hands. Then tobacco growing was introduced in Virginia. Tobacco needed more care and skill than sugar, was profitable on smaller plantations, and did not need massive processing facilities close to the fields. Tobacco from different plantations had brand names, like wines from different estates. The price reflected quality, and small farms did well out of this system. Conversely, sugar from different plantations was mixed together. The sugar trade developed the hierarchical system of ‘sorts’, which was later adopted by cotton and then oil traders. In a word, tobacco is a branded commodity , while sugar is a sorted commodity .
Tea had been known in the West since the beginning of the seventeenth century. It was used as a medicine, and the market was small. Later, people started drinking tea with sugar – a combination that became the most successful marketing ploy in history. The Dutch imported tea from India, but in the middle of the eighteenth century the Europeans succeeded in opening up Canton for trade. British and Dutch traders competed there along with the French, the Swedes and the Danes. The price of tea fell tenfold, and the consumption of tea per capita in England increased 400 times over a century. The influx of sugar from the Western Atlantic and tea from the Pacific met and mingled on the sceptred isle. With imperial elegance, this encounter took place at the exact midpoint – in the millions of cups served by British ladies during the daily ritual of high tea, a pale imitation of the Japanese tea ceremony, just as the tea cups were an imitation of Chinese porcelain. But the tea and sugar were real, as were the cotton tablecloths, and the tobacco and port which were the male version of the ceremony.
The century of the Enlightenment enthusiastically embraced these drugs. Initially exotic and luxurious, they became affordable items of mass consumption. They increased sociability, filled the stomach, created dependency, gave rise to profit and, usually, escaped the censure of church and state. 5 While opium in England remained the preserve of libertines, tea with sugar, a pinch of tobacco, or a cup of coffee or chocolate were available to everyone. Sugar was at the core of this addictive bundle. Thomas Dalby openly advised the colonies of the American South to follow the example of the West Indies rather than New England: they just needed to produce more sugar and import more slaves. However, sugar cane didn’t thrive in the continental colonies – even in Louisiana the winters were too cold. In that sweet era, the main function of America was to keep the West Indies supplied. On the islands where black slaves produced white sugar, there was no spare land available to grow food crops. The mainland colonies supplied the sugar islands with all the salt fish they needed and most of the oats, grain and flour, lumber, horses and sheep. The planters paid the American farmers, fishermen and blacksmiths with sugar, rum and molasses. Launching unparalleled capital flows from their tiny territories, the sugar islands financed the American colonies, the English textile industry and the British Royal Navy.
While enjoying their good fortune, the West Indies planters yearned to return to England. There they bought London townhouses or country estates from the old aristocracy. Many a stately home in England and Scotland, with its classical portico, ceremonial staircase and ballroom, was built by a sugar plantation owner. Public schools such as Harrow and Eton were full of pupils from the West Indies. Later these children, some of them the descendants of pirates or convicts, married into the aristocracy. They became members of parliament, ministers, mayors. When King George III came across a carriage that was grander than his own, he said to his prime minister, ‘Sugar, sugar eh? … how are the duties, eh Pitt, how are the duties?’ 6 The wealthiest sugar producers managed their plantations in absentia: they lived in England and appointed bailiffs, sending them their written instructions by mail. One of these fortunate men was William Beckford, a grandson of a governor of Jamaica. Known as the richest subject of the British crown, Beckford was elected Lord Mayor of London twice. John Gladstone, a Scottish merchant and member of Parliament, owned a company in Liverpool which traded sugar and slaves with the West Indies, hemp with Russia, cotton with India and grain with the American colonies. The owner of several plantations in Jamaica, he continued to live in Liverpool and later returned to Scotland, where he bought a huge estate. His son became prime minister of England. As Montesquieu said, this really was ‘la commerce douce’ – sweet trade.