What would happen if there was no sugar in the world today? Most of us wouldn’t be able to handle it. What caused the sugar trade, because we people on this earth love sugar! The sugar trade was driven by the consumption and intake; too many people liked it and still do. Slavery played a big role in the sugar trade. To get the sugar we had to have money, and we used it to drive the sugar trade. Sugar is so good the British just had to have their hands on it.
The British had to have more than their hands on the sugar; they wanted the sugar in their food. In E.T Parris illustration it shows kids and people trying to get the last little bit of sugar left in the 700-1200 pound barrel. British people loved it so much, they had to get more. They used it as an “auxiliary” as said in document three Benjamin Moseley’s M.D. Sugar is addictive, most people don’t live a day without it. When the British first tasted sugar, which is contained in tea, coffee, and chocolate they liked it a lot. They used it to sweeten up their foods, like tea originally tea didn’t have sugar in it until the sugar trade. British wanted more sugar, sugar can be classified as a drug because it is so addicting. Consumption is a big part of the sugar trade. To make sugar there was a hard process that was time consuming.
Since the process of making sugar was so time consuming none of the British people wanted to take the hard labor up. That’s when they had the slaves come in; they bought slaves to do the hard work. The work was really dangerous, so they believed it was okay for slaves to do the work. In document nine it says if they didn’t like sugar that much then they wouldn’t have to buy a slave which coasts 14- 41 British pounds. Most people in England were making money off of the slaves, they would have the slaves do the work and sell the sugar for more money. Slave and sugar production cost a lot of money says document number six. Money was a big part of the sugar trade. The more slaves you had the more sugar was produced. There was a lot of supplies required to have the sugar plantations, document six states that for a five hundred acre land plantation for sugar it requires 21 certain things to hold a plantation. They had to have 16 different houses and 300 slaves that were mainly male to enhance the sugar production. Slavery cost a lot of the money the British had.
Money had a TON to do with the sugar trade. Slavery was probably one of the biggest costs of money. In document number seven it says “this is the first curse of sugar: it is capital intensive.” That means that it cost a lot of money. It cost a lot of money to start a sugar plantation, so only rich people had them. They used slaves, which cost a lot of money, to take care of the plantations. To start plantations British people also traded stated in document number twelve. It still cost a lot of money, but it still drove the sugar trade.
There were a lot of reasons why the sugar trade was drove, but the main reasons were probably consumption, slavery, and money. It may be a good thing there was a sugar trade, because most people can’t live without sugar. We all use sugar every day and it is all because of the British and everyone else who helped in the sugar trade. These are the reasons why the sugar trade was driven.
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