Sugar And The Transatlantic Slave Trade

When we think of sugar, we think of it as an abused ingredient in many of the harmful and ultra-processed foods that have been a subject of controversy. However, the sugar industry is no mere accomplice in the war on health and nutrition. Rather, big sugar has its own distinctive history that warrants a feature in the discussion on diabolical corporations, in particular those engaged in the war on food. Although, the discussion on sugar extends beyond food and heavily includes socio-political dynamics.

Today we will address three questions; namely: (1) What was the role of colonial Canada in the origins of the sugar industry? (2) What was the relationship between sugar and the transatlantic slave? And (3) What has been the role of big sugar in the corruption of politics?

And now onto the first question being: what was the role of colonial Canada in the origins of the sugar industry? For nearly five centuries, European planters made dizzying fortunes in sugar, made possible by enslaving workers in colonized lands. Sugar became so integral to European profiteering that it started being produced on a global scale. Canadian investors, too, have reaped massive sugar profits.

During the 1700s and 1800s, most Europeans, in what is now Canada, were implicated in the transatlantic sugar and slave trades. Not only did many consume the fruits of the enslaved sugar industry — including molasses and rum, in addition to sugar — but some also invested in Caribbean trade, itself powered by enslaved sugar work. Furthermore, several Canadian banks — including the Imperial Bank of Commerce and the Bank of Nova Scotia (now known as Scotiabank) — have their origins in the West Indies, where their forerunners established themselves early in the 19th century, with the Bank of Nova Scotia said to exist “in the shadow of West Indian slavery.”

Now, Western Canadians have also profited from unfree sugar labour. The famed western Canadian brand, Rogers Sugar, was established by American Benjamin Tingley Rogers who moved to Canada in 1889. Having grown up in the sugar industry, Rogers had both sugar connections and expertise.

Building a refinery in Vancouver, which was at the time a city newly constructed on unceded territories, Rogers created a western Canadian sugar empire — one that sourced raw sugar cane through the Pacific, refined it in British Columbia and sold it throughout the Canadian West. Railway magnate William Cornelius Van Horne, together with noted investors such as Richard Bladworth Angus, Edmund Boyd Osler and Donald Alexander Smith, were among the ventures’ early shareholders. By the time of his death in 1918, Rogers had made large profits. However, less well known, though, is Rogers Sugar’s violent past.

To begin with, in order to make the refined sugar that is so familiar to Canadians today, B.C. Sugar (the name of the company that owned Rogers Sugar) sourced both beet and cane sugars. Canadian beet sugar has its own atrocious labour history. Refined predominantly in Vancouver, Rogers Sugar was made mostly from raw cane sugar. Since sugar cane cannot grow in Canada, B.C. Sugar sourced internationally from places including Mauritius, Java, Peru, Hawaii, Cuba, Fiji and the Dominican Republic. B.C. Sugar also ventured into sugar cane plantation ownership: in Fiji between 1905 and 1922, and in the Dominican Republic between 1944 and 1955. Notably, it purchased the latter from the Bank of Nova Scotia.

In both cases, workers reported horrendous conditions. The pay was so low and the work was so menial in the Dominican Republic that, as historian Catherine C. Legrand points out, workers left the plantation whenever they could. Furthermore, in Fiji between 1905 and 1920, B.C. Sugar employed indentured workers from India who migrated to the colony on five-year contracts. As on other Fiji plantations, workers were subject to numerous atrocities and treated in ways similar to how enslaved and indentured people were treated on plantations globally. Here’s more on colonial Canada’s role in the history of the sugar industry.

SUGAR AND THE TRANSATLANTIC SLAVE TRADE

This then brings us to the second question, being: what was the relationship between sugar and the transatlantic slave? Well, sugar and slavery became intimately connected in the Americas during the early modern era. Once the cultivation of sugar cane had been transplanted to the Americas in the early 16th century, Spanish and Portuguese planters turned to exploiting slaves as laborers on the plantations. The first slaves were taken from among Indigenous populations in the Americas. In the 17th century, English and French planters tried to recruit indentured servants from Europe. Both these sources of labor would, for several reasons, turn out to be insufficient to meet the great demand for laborers on the American sugar plantations. Planters throughout the Americas therefore came to import slaves from Africa, particularly following the so-called “sugar revolution” during the late 17th century.

As sugar henceforth became the preferred crop of cultivation throughout most of the Caribbean and Brazil, it also became the main driver of the transatlantic slave trade. The particular demography of sugar planting—with a natural population decline as a consequence of hard labor, a brutal labor regime, and insufficient diet—did furthermore exacerbate the demand for slave imports even further. The cultivation of sugar, and all economic activities associated with the slave plantation complex, would be of great economic importance for investors, merchants and producers in Europe. The political decision to abolish the slave trade would therefore have large economic consequences both in the Americas, Africa, and Europe.

Ultimately, it was the introduction of sugar slavery in the New World that changed everything. “The true Age of Sugar had begun — and it was doing more to reshape the world than any ruler, empire or war had ever done. Over the four centuries that followed Columbus’s arrival, on the mainlands of Central and South America in Mexico, Guyana and Brazil as well as on the sugar islands of the West Indies — Cuba, Barbados and Jamaica, among others — countless indigenous lives were destroyed and nearly 11 million Africans were enslaved, just counting those who survived the Middle Passage.

SUGAR AND THE CORRUPTION OF POLITICS

And now onto our final question, being: What has been the role of big sugar in the corruption of politics? Like most industries with a diabolical drive for profit over the wellbeing of people, the sugar industry employed tools in an effort to corrupt politics. We saw this with the subsidising of sugar by the federal government in the US, while it was being sold by sugar companies at three times the price that other nations were paying for sugar. We also saw this, when sugar companies bought politicians in order to obtain favourable outcomes in legislation.

Written By Lindokuhle Mabaso