Sugar Cane, Black Slaves——Mercantilism in America back to the time

By the time when feudalism decayed and the new world has been discovered and explored, mercantilism, as a dominant thought as well as an economic system, became nationalism among European powers whose purpose were to build wealthy and powerful states measured by money and bullion.[ Saad Abi-Hamad, Mercantilism, Fall 2015, 2-4.] At the time trade was the main method to gain wealth, meanwhile sugar was regarded as white gold and was in high demand throughout Europe. Driven by the mercantilism thought that any one country’s wealth came at the expense of other countries[ Robert Tignor, Jeremy Adelman, Stephen Aron, Stephen Kotkin, Suzanne Marchand, Gyan Prakash, and Michael Tsin, Worlds Together, Worlds Apart(4th Edition, Volume 2), 482.], European powers began to get involved in the sugar plantation to produce sugar for trading around the world, maintaining the states’ power and wealth. As to run such labor-intense plantations, slave trade between America and West Africa embraced its prosperous time thus the Three-cornered Atlantic System was formed.

After Europeans accidentally discovered the New World through Columbus’s voyage to India, they explored and colonized the new world rapidly, like Spanish and Portuguese in particular. At the time mercantilism was the mainstream economic thought, people regarded the world’s wealth as a fixed amount, one’s wealth came at the expense of other countries. Wealth, referred as money and bullion, was perceived as the equivalence of the countries’ power. Driven by this thought, European powers spared no effort to develop trade and accumulate wealth. Thus the mercantile classes were thought highly of by the country and the government, for the reason that they were the main force of accumulating wealth for the country and strengthening the country’s power;what’s more, they were the main taxes and levies payers.

In return for the contribution of mercantile classes, the government enacted many mercantilist policies in order to protect mercantile classes’ business interests against foreign competition, no matter if those actions would cause rivalry among countries or not; Seven Years War between England and France was an good example to prove it.[ Saad Abi-Hamad, Mercantilism, Fall 2015, 6-8.] We can also have insight of such mercantilism thought-driven actions via sugar trade.

Date back to the seventeenth century, sugar as a precious goods was in high demand especially in Europe, and it was even called white gold. Portuguese was the first who introduced and build the labor-intense sugarcane plantation systems. However, since there was no monopoly then, the competition in the world among European countries was so fierce. Following Portuguese’s step, Spanish, English and French also began to replicate and build sugarcane plantations in their colonial areas.[ Robert Tignor, Jeremy Adelman, Stephen Aron, Stephen Kotkin, Suzanne Marchand, Gyan Prakash, and Michael Tsin, Worlds Together, Worlds Apart(4th Edition, Volume 2), 486-488.]

Their purpose was apparently in common, they wanted to export the sugar for trade after they were able to be self-sufficient, without paying a lot of money to buy the product. Later on when they all had their own plantations, regardless of the imperial rivalry those series of actions had caused, a more serious problem raised. It was the labor arrangement.

As the native people suffered from severe population drop in many ways, including died in diseases and high-intense work in mines or plantations, they couldn’t fulfill the labor demand. African people who came from similar tropical environment seemed to be the best solution for the labor scarcity situation. Ever since, the bloody and cruel Three-cornered Atlantic System began.

Here is how the system works: when Europeans sailed towards Africa and Americas with their exporting manufactured goods, they got ships of black slaves via trade mainly sending to the New World, with a little amount of slaves were sent to the Old World for servile. Also, ships sailed from Americas with rum, sugar and other resources back to mother countries, as well as sailing to Africa in exchange for more slaves. So on the Atlantic Ocean, the routes of voyages formed a triangle shape, known as Three-cornered Atlantic System.[ Robert Tignor, Jeremy Adelman, Stephen Aron, Stephen Kotkin, Suzanne Marchand, Gyan Prakash, and Michael Tsin, Worlds Together, Worlds Apart(4th Edition, Volume 2), 479-488.]

As is known to all, in the economic principle, when the demand goes up, the supply follows. When the world was demanding for more sugar, in chasing of more surpluses or contribution margin while producing more products, the plantations used more slaves to work and made them work as much as they can, and also took the most of them. Long-hour work, less food and poor living condition were not a strange view in those plantations. Every country, every merchants or owners wanted to make as much as money out of the sugar trade. The death rate was so high that the plantations needed to import more slaves. Besides, during such rounds of slave trade, because the Europeans were trading products with more added value, they earned more surpluses from each round of trade. It was a virtuous cycle for the Europeans. Based on mercantilism logic which is profit-centered, such surpluses they earned from slave trade eliminated their intentions to improve slaves’ living conditions and their welfare.

In accordance of mercantilism, economy and politics were mutual independent within the country, but they could support each other. Because European countries were then benefiting a lot from the slave trade and plantation system, they were not willing to let abolitionism and its supporters win. Through legislation, the government made slaves as properties of their owners, at which time exploited slaves’ civil right and human right. Meanwhile, the slaves were regarded as a form of capital only. Thus the slave owners could make the most of their properties in pursuit of more profit.

Investing capital or property for trade to make profit, which is just a normal principle for business. In the perspective of mercantilism, slave trade and slave plantation systems were just part of the business at that time. The pro-slavery lobby was firm and powerful,that’s why abolitionists like William Wilberforce had such a hard time to fight for abolition.[ William Baker, “William Wilberforce on the Idea of Negro Inferiority”, Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol. 31, No. 3 (Jul. - Sep., 1970), pp. 433-440]

Since the political power supported the economic power, which was the mercantile classes, and mercantile classes were the one who ran the slave plantation systems and supported the country’s economy, so we could argue that slave plantation systems were promoted and protected by the European states partially as a result of mercantilist beliefs.