Barbados Sugar~

Topic: Gullah History
The decline in cotton prices in Barbados, mentioned in the post for 9 January 2022, sent some planters looking for other commercial crops.  Ginger and indigo were tried, but the only important result of the latter was the introduction of the idea that a planter had to become a processor as well as grower. [1]  The market was too small to justify the expense. [2]

Our knowledge of the introduction of sugar is sketchy.  What began as simple statements in early reports became legends as actions and motives were ascribed to actors.

The earliest report was made by Richard Ligon, who lived on the island from 1647 to 1650.  He heard unnamed men acquired plants from Pernambuco, an area where the Portuguese introduced sugar cane in Brazil.  He simply mentioned their most important attribute: there were industrious. [3]

John Scott arrived in Barbados in 1665 [4] and wrote an account of the island in 1667.  He denied human agency, and believed cane was “brought from Brazil ‘by an accident’ a few years before” 1641. [5]  Richard Dutton, the governor of the island between 1680 and 1685, made a note in Scott’s manuscript that Pieter Brower introduced the first canes in 1637. [6]

A couple generations later, legend filled in the missing details.  William Duke [7] believed James Holdip “obtained some canes from a Dutch slave ship.”  Once he succeeded, he “helped his neighbors to start cane fields of their own.” [8]

The differences between Scott and Duke, on the one hand, and Ligon are more than views of the ideal behavior of heroes.  The one represents the theologically ordained Medieval world where individuals in the hierarchy incurred obligations in return for being granted wealth. [9]  The other was part of the emerging modern world that reward effort, often based on understanding the ways of the natural world.

As mentioned in the post for 31 October 2021, the names of the pioneers only interest historians.  The important person is the innovator who succeeds with a crop.  There is no debate that person was James Drax.  He arrived with Henry Powell in 1627, [10] and accumulated capital growing tobacco and cotton.  When prices fell in 1639, he would have had the resources to experiment with an alternative crop. [11]

The critical date seems to be 1643 when a representative of James Hay’s son informed him one man on Barbados had shipped seventy chests of sugar. [12]  From that, one can construct a preliminary chronology based on the growth cycle of the crop.

Sugar cane is grown from buried stem pieces, [13] so Drax had to have obtained cane plants, not seeds.  Saccharum officinarum has the photosynthesis pattern typical of tropical grasses, rather than the one used by the majority of plants. [14]  The length to maturity depends on the closeness to the equator.  Thus, on Madeira it takes nearly two years for canes to produce, but only fourteen to eighteen months in Brazil. [15]  Ligon said planters first treated sugar plants as annuals and cut the canes after twelve months.  They learned from observation, and probably some trial and error, to wait until cane sprouts were fifteen months old. [16]

If Drax first shipped year-old sugar in October 1643, he began planting by 1642.  If he could not ship until he discovered the optimal time for harvest, and if that only took one iteration, he had to have begun planting cane by 1640.

As it grows, sugar molecules accumulate in water in the stems.  Producing a shippable product involves crushing the stems, then heating the extract for several days.  Periodically, impurities are removed, which allows the chemical processes to accelerate until the sugar molecules begin to crystalize.  Then they are put into clay containers to allow the remaining liquid to escape. [17]  This crystallization phase requires laborers who learn from experience to judge when to act.

The quality of the raw sugar varied.  In the early years, the high molasses content may not have mattered.  The early 1640s were a period of uncertainty in the sugar industry.  It had been stable in 1550 when Brazil, a colony of Portugal, began growing sugar cane. [18]  The raw sugar was shipped on Dutch ships [19] to Antwerp for refining. [20]

Chaos was introduced by Philip II of Spain.  First, as part of his attempt to put down the Protestant rebellion in the north, he destroyed Antwerp in 1576.  Amsterdam built its first sugar refinery in 1577. [21]  Then, through rules of succession, Philip gained control of the Portuguese throne in 1580.  To protect its refining interests from the Spanish, the Dutch took control of the sugar growing region in Brazil in 1630. [22]

The Portuguese revolt against Spain in 1640 lead to war that lasted until 1668. [23]  Dutch merchants no doubt recognized they no longer were useful to the Portuguese in Brazil and may have begun looking for other sources of sugar. [24]  Duke believed Drax “brought the model of a sugar-mill and some coppers from Holland” in the early 1640s. [25]

In 1645, the Portuguese rebelled against the Dutch in Brazil.  Matthew Parker says that led to “widespread destruction of cane-fields and mills” and production “was stopped for a year.” [26] This is the year Drax was “adjudged to have made a fortune.” [27]

At that point, Amsterdam refineries would have made more demands upon the planters in Barbados. Scott recalled the Dutch managed the trade and supplied the more sober residents with Negroes, “coppers, stills and all other things” needed to produce sugar. [28]  Dutton added sugar production “came to no considerable perfection till the year 1645, and so forward to the year 1652 at which time the Dutch by the great credit they gave the planters brought the island to its utmost perfection.” [29]

Once Drax proved he could produce raw sugar that brought premium prices, the introduction of the crop on Barbados entered the third phase when men imitate success.  In this case, Michael Bennett says London merchants began investing in plantations.  Between 1640 and 1650 they purchased interests in 5,739 acres.  They wanted more than high returns that came from the temporary disruption in the supply of sugar from Brazil.  They were looking for security while Civil War was raging in England.  84% of the land purchases were made between 1643 and 1648. [30]

End Notes
1.  The post for 13 January 2019 describes the difficulties Eliza Lucas encountered learning to process indigo in South Carolina in the 1740s.

2.  As mentioned in the post for 19 May 2019, demand for indigo did not develop in England until the 1730s.

3.  Richard Ligon.  A True and Exact History of the Island of Barbadoes.  London: Peter Parker, 1673.  85.  The original is: “Some of the moft induftrious men, having gotten Plants from Fernambock, a place in Brafil, and made tryal of them at the Barbadoes, and finding them to grow, they planted more and more.”

4.  “Captain John Scott.”  Wikipedia website.  Scott is mentioned in the post for 31 October 2021.

5.  John Scott.  “Descriptions of Guiana, Tobago, and Barbados.”  British Museum, Sloane mss 3662.  Quotation from N. Darnell Davis.  Cavaliers and Roundheads in Barbados.  Georgetown, British Guiana: Argosy Press, 1887.  69.

6.  Davis.  69.  “The Description of Barbados in this manuscript is by John Scott. There is a supplementary notice of the Island, apparently by Sir William Dutton, at one time Governor
there.” [31]  George Edmundson speculated that Brower left Barbados when Parliament, under Oliver Cromwell, proscribed products from the island because it was controlled by followers of the deposed Stuarts.  A place name in Guyana, Browershoek, suggested he moved to the Wild Coast. [32]

7.  William Duke.  Some Memoirs of the First Settlement of the Island of Barbados.  Barbados: Wm. Beeby, 1741.  His sources are William Arnold, who came for William Courteen in 1627; [33] and Samuel Bulkly and John Summers, who arrived for Hay in 1628. [34]  Courteen is introduced in the post for 31 October 2021.  Hay is introduced in the post for 7 November 2021.

8.  Richard S. Dunn.  Sugar and Slaves: The Rise of the Planter Class in the English West Indies, 1624–1713.  Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1972.  62.  Quotations are from Dunn.  Robert Schomburgk has “Captain James Holdip planted the first sugar-canes in Barbados, which he got from a ship from Guinea.”  He indicates the information appeared in the appendix of Duke’s collection of memoirs. [35]  Dunn combines two accounts, and his notes only identify Duke.  The original is not available online or through the usual online used-book sellers.

9.  This was alluded to in the post for 7 November 2021, which mentioned William I made temporary land grants in exchange for military service.

10.  Matthew Parker.  The Sugar Barons.  New York: Walker and Company, 2011.  15.  Powell is mentioned in the post for 31 October 2021.

11.  David Watts.  The West Indies: Patterns of Development, Culture and Environmental Change since 1492.  Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990.  182.

12.  Thomas Robinson at St Christophers.  Letter to Thomas Chappell, secretary to James, Earl of Carlisle, 24 October 1643.  Cited by Michael D. Bennett.  “Merchant Capital and the Origins of the Barbados Sugar Boom, 1627-1672.”  PhD dissertation.  The University of Sheffield, June 2020.  113.  The original is: “this shippe is laden with 70tie cheists of sugar all of one mans p[ro]duce.”

13.  Elizabeth Vaughan.  “Louisiana Sugar: A Geohistorical Perspective.”  PhD dissertation.  Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College, May 2003.  60.  Ligon describes the process on page 88.

14.  Vaughan.  48.  Normal C3 photosynthesis fixes carbon in three molecules, while tropical C4 used four to reduce evaporation in hot climates. [36]

15.  Jason W. Moore.  “Madeira, Sugar, and the Conquest of Nature in the ‘First’ Sixteenth Century: Part I: From ‘Island of Timber’ to Sugar Revolution, 1420–1506.”  Fernand Braudel Center Review 32:345–390:2009.  374.

16.  Ligon.  85.
17.  Vaughan.  Chapter 3, “Sugar and Sugar Cane.”

18.  Matthew Edel.  “The Brazilian Sugar Cycle of the Seventeenth Century and the Rise of West Indian Competition.”  Caribbean Studies 9:24–44:April 1969.  27.

19.  Hugh Thomas.  The Slave Trade.  New York: Simon and Schuster, 1997.  159.
20.  Edel.  27.
21.  Edel.  27.
22.  Dunn.  61.

23.  “Portuguese Restoration War.”  Wikipedia website.  Spain then was ruled by Phillip IV, grandson of Phillip II.

24.  Edel applies modern economic models to explain “why the Dutch would have had incentive to introduce sugar to Barbados, even during the period of their secure control of Pernambuco.”  Russell Menard believes the Dutch East India Company began promoting sugar crops in Asia, and that the harvests were beginning to arrive in Amsterdam. [37]

25.  Duke.  Cited by Robert H. Schomburgk.  The History of Barbados.  London: Longman, 1848.  143.

26.  Porter.  34.

27.  Edel 1.  30.  He noted sugar exports from Pernambuco dropped more than 60% between 1645 and 1646.

28.  Scott.  Quoted by Watts.  188.  Bennett notes historians have not found much evidence to support Dutch involvement after 1645. [38]  Christian Koot believes planters stressed the role of the Dutch after Oliver Cromwell passed the first Navigation Act in 1651 to limit shipping to  English carriers. [39]

29.  Dutton.  Quoted by George Edmundson.  “The Dutch in Western Guiana.”  English Historical Review 16:640–675:1901.  656.  The original is: “but came to no considerable perfection till the year 1645, and so forward to the year 1652 at which time the Dutch by the great credit they gave the planters brought the island to its utmost perfection.”

30.  Bennett.  127.
31.  Davis.  17.
32.  Edmundson.  656–657.
33.  Schomburgk.  259–260.
34.  Schomburgk.  221.
35.  Schomburgk.  143.
36.  “C4 Carbon Fixation.”  Wikipedia website.

37.  Russell R. Menard.  Sweet Negotiations: Sugar, Slavery, and Plantation Agriculture in Early Barbados.  Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2006.  51.  His source is Neils Steensgaard.  “The Growth and Composition of the Long Distance Trade.”  102–152 in The Rise of Merchant Empires, edited by James D. Tracy.  Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: 1990.  I could not find any corroboration for this.

38.  Bennett.  3.

39.  Christian J. Koot.  “Anglo-Dutch Trade in the Chesapeake and the British Caribbean, 1621–1733.”  72–99 in Dutch Atlantic Connections, 1680–1800, edited by Gert Oostindie and Jessica V. Roitman.  Leiden: Brill, 2014.  85–86.