Unit 2 European Explorers and the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade

Lesson 4
Sugar and the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade

Put some in a cup of cocoa, sprinkle it on fresh strawberries, add it to cake batter.
What are we talking about?

1) “White Gold,” as British colonists called it, drove the slave trade that brought 2
millions of Africans to the Americas beginning in the early 16th-century. The
history of every nation in the Caribbean, much of South America and parts of the
Southern United States was forever shaped by sugar cane plantations started as
cash crops by European superpowers.

2) Today more sugar is produced in Brazil than anywhere else in the world even
though, ironically, the crop never grew wild in the Americas. Sugarcane — native
to Southeast Asia — first made its way to the New World with Christopher
Columbus. He landed at what is now the Dominican Republic and quickly found
that sugar grew well in the tropical environment.

3) Europeans already loved sugar which they got from the Asia, but it was very
expensive. The colonizers figured out that the bigger the supply, the lower the
Putnam/Northern Westchester BOCES:
Grade 5 Integrated Social Studies/English Language Arts Curriculum
The Western Hemisphere
Page 1 Revised August 2018
 Unit 2 European Explorers and the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade
Lesson 4
Sugar and the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade

price but since the demand was so high some of the Spanish colonizers snipped
seeds from Columbus' fields in the Dominican Republic and planted them
throughout the new Caribbean colonies. By the middle of the 16th-century, the
Portuguese had brought some to Brazil and, soon after, the sugar cane made its
way to British, Dutch and French colonies such as Barbados and Haiti.

4) There was only one big problem! The native peoples had no immunity to the
European diseases, and untold numbers of people died. The colonizers were
lacking a labor supply to plant, harvest and process the sugarcane crop. It was
backbreaking work.

5) The solution was found by turning to the continent of Africa. If you could
capture workers there, and turn them into slaves you would not have to pay them.
The profits from sugar would rise even more. This trade in slaves is called the
'Maafa' by some African-American historians. This word means 'disaster' in the
African language Swahili The first slave ships arrived in 1505 and continued
coming for more than 300 years. Most came from western Africa, where
Portuguese colonies had already established trading outposts for ivory, pepper, and
other goods. To most of the European merchants, the people they put on cargo
ships across the Atlantic — a horrible voyage known as the Middle Passage — was
merely a continuation of a trading system they already used.

6) By the middle of the 19th century, more than 10 million Africans had been
forcibly removed to the New World and distributed among the sugar plantations of
Brazil and the Caribbean.

cash crop - grown to be sold rather than for use by the farmerun
immunities - ability of the body to resist a particular infection

Based on “How Sugar Changed the World.” Live Science. http://www.livescience.com/4949-sugar-changed-world.html

Putnam/Northern Westchester BOCES:

Grade 5 Integrated Social Studies/English Language Arts Curriculum
The Western Hemisphere
Page 2 Revised August 2018