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Sugar cane - and the slave trade
After the discovery of the New World, vast fields of crops such as sugar cane were grown to feed the European empires. Before long, British and French plantations in the West Indies began to dominate. British west coast ports such as Bristol and Liverpool thrived on the sugar cane industry and refineries and packaging factories were set up. But this went hand in hand with a much more sinister trade of the time - the transatlantic slave trade.
Slave routes
A great deal of labour was required to produce large quantities of sugar on relatively small areas of land: the slave trade supplied it. Ships, laden with goods, left British ports destined for West Africa in exchange for people. And so began the most notorious period in the histories of Bristol and Liverpool.
Tightly packed into ships, slaves were sailed from Africa across the Atlantic to the West Indies. During the journey they were often chained down and kept in horrendous conditions. Any slaves who had managed to survive the journey were taken to shore and sold to plantation owners where they spent the rest of their lives working to produce goods like sugar cane. This became known as the 'Triangular Trade' so-called because the route usually taken between Europe, West Africa and the West Indies formed a triangle.
Tightly packed into ships, slaves were sailed from Africa across the Atlantic to the West Indies. During the journey they were often chained down and kept in horrendous conditions. Any slaves who had managed to survive the journey were taken to shore and sold to plantation owners where they spent the rest of their lives working to produce goods like sugar cane. This became known as the 'Triangular Trade' so-called because the route usually taken between Europe, West Africa and the West Indies formed a triangle.
European expansion
While there is evidence that a couple of ships brought back one or two cargoes of sugar to Liverpool in 1665, it was not until the creation of sugar refineries in the town that imports began to increase significantly. The amount of sugar imported into Liverpool grew rapidly. By the middle of the eighteenth century British ships were carrying about 50,000 slaves a year and goods such as sugar became central to Liverpool's and Bristol's economy. |
| Sugar cane field. |
Ultimately, sugar production provided one of the original means and motivations for European expansion, colonisation and control in the new world, precipitating a course of events that would forever shape the destiny of the Western Hemisphere.
