Search results
Results From The WOW.Com Content Network
The Portuguese introduced sugar plantations in the 1550s off the coast of their Brazilian settlement colony, located on the island of Sao Vincente. [2] As the Portuguese and Spanish maintained a strong colonial presence in the Caribbean, the Iberian Peninsula amassed tremendous wealth from the cultivation of this cash crop.
The success of Spanish Caribbean sugar plantations was a model for other European powers. The Portuguese colony of Brazil also developed large-scale sugar plantations. The high demand in Europe for sugar attracted other European powers to stake claims on Caribbean islands claimed by the Spanish but not effectively held.
Those slaves who worked on sugar plantations and in sugar mills were often subject to the harshest of conditions. The field work was rigorous manual labour which the slaves began at an early age. The work days lasted close to 20 hours during harvest and processing, including cultivating and cutting the crops, hauling wagons, and processing ...
While initially a crop of the Indian subcontinent, the cultivation of sugar in the New World had significant effects on Spanish society. New World sugar cultivation added to the growing power of the Spanish and Portuguese economies while also increasing the popularity of slave labor (which had severe impacts on African, American, and European societies).
Historian Daniele Conversi locates the conquest of the Canary Islands within the history of colonial and imperial genocides. [37] Genocide scholar Mark Levene has stated that while there was not the intent by the Castilian crown to commit genocide, the result of their conquest was the same as if they had intended to commit genocide. [ 38 ]
Factory laborers quarters, with cane areas of Hacienda Luisita in background, 1929 Aerial view of Central Azucarera de Tarlac, circa 1930s. During the American period, the hacienda supplied almost 20% of America's sugar from 1898 to the 1940s (from the Spanish–American War until World War II) back when the Tabacalera still owned it. [6]
However, the most valuable plantations produced sugar. The average sugar plantation employed 300 slaves, and the largest sugar plantation on record employed 1400 slaves. These plantations took up only 14% of Saint-Domingue's cultivated land; comparatively, coffee was 50% of all cultivated land, indigo was 22%, and cotton only 5%.
African slaves were forcibly brought in the early the 1500s and sugar plantations were established on the island of Hispaniola (now divided between Haiti and the Dominican Republic). The Spanish and Portuguese had established sugar plantations in the Atlantic islands off the African coast, in Madeira, São Tomé, and the Canary Islands. Cane ...