University of the West Indies

Bachelor of Education in History Education

Freedom, Decolonization, and Independence in the Caribbean
Since 1804
HIST2007
Jennette Corniffe
Tutorial Essay
Joshua Hayles
620083400
February 2, 2016
Assess the success of the measures employed by Caribbean sugar planters to address the problems in the
sugar industry after emancipation up to 1914.

Introduction:
The colonial sugar industry was already an old institution by the time that tidings of the end of

slavery began to appear in the late eighteenth century and when it became a reality first in the British

West Indies in 1833 then later on in other colonies. One would think that the industry possessing such a

level of maturity would aid it in adjusting to the precipitous changes of the nineteenth century, but sugar

being an unchallenged powerhouse for so long actually resulted in the complacency of its practitioners.

Generations of planters continued to use the same methods with only marginal innovations being made

thanks to their very risk averse management style. Essentially they believed that if it isn’t broken, then

don’t fix it, while not realizing that it had to break eventually. This brings us to the crisis in the sugar

industry arising around the time of emancipation in the Caribbean due to a number of factors. For their

part planters did try to make the necessary changes to keep the sugar industry alive, but the question must

be asked: Were these changes successful? Yes, the planters managed to keep the sugar industry alive

through the adoption of technological and chemical innovations, the use of migrant labor, and finding

new customers among other solutions. This essay will outline the problems the planters faced starting in

the early nineteenth century and then discuss the appropriateness of their responses. The foremost of these

problems, and probably the one that alerted most planters to the severity of their situation, was the lack of

labor.

Problems Planters Faced:

After emancipation, which occurred in 1833 in the British West Indies and 1848 in the French

West Indies, and 1886 in the Spanish Caribbean, there was a large shortage of labor because many of the

former slaves, understandably, didn't want to work on the plantations where they had had very bad

experiences. This left the planters with the dilemma of not only finding a new labor source but also the

capital needed to pay this labor force because outright free labor was no longer an option on a large scale

and sugar cane is a very labor intensive crop. On smaller islands where land was not easily obtained

because it was mostly owned by planters this was less of an issue. The slaves had no way of getting land
to plant their own crops and were forced to either continue to work on plantations or try to migrate 1. On

larger islands like Jamaica former slaves sought to obtain land, which not only meant that they were no

longer a labor source, but also that land availability for the planters began to go down. As a result,

planters began to refuse to sell land to former slaves in an attempt to leave them no choice but to work on

a plantation.

An equally pressing issue for Caribbean sugar cane planters was the rising popularity of the sugar

beet, which was a trend that had been on the horizon since 1747 when German chemists were finding

ways of extracting sugar from the beet; however, it did not become a serious issue until around 1876 2.

Sugar beet was such an issue for three reasons. One being that it could be produced in temperate climates.

This eliminated the hassle, cost, and danger of having to ship the product across the world because it

could be grown much closer to home in Europe where a large portion of the market was. It was a much

less labor intensive crop because it grew below ground instead of in chutes like sugar cane, which did

have the result of it taking up four times as much space, but did not present any huge problems for beet

planters. The third reason being that it benefited from the protectionism that Caribbean sugar cane used to

enjoy in many forms. The British government stopped taxing the final product produced from beet sugar

and taxing sugar that came in from outside of the country at one point. The Napoleonic war also caused

the British government to cut of the supply of sugar into the interior of Europe causing countries to turn to

the locally produced beet sugar3.

Aside from these two major hindrances to the sugar cane industry a myriad of other setbacks

made themselves apparent. Among them was the switch from mercantilism to liberalism and free-trade

with The Sugar Act of 1846 being passed4. This may seem beneficial to the industry at first because the

colonies were now allowed to sell to whomever they wanted, but it also came with the added setback of
1
J. H. Galloway, The Sugar Cane Industry (New York City: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 124
2
J. H. Galloway, The Sugar Cane Industry (New York City: Cambridge University Press, 1989),130-33.
3
Hilary Beckles and Verene Shepherd, Caribbean Freedom: Society and Economy from Emancipation to the
Present, 2nd ed. (Kingston: Ian Randle Publishers, 1993), 315-18.
4
Hilary Beckles and Verene Shepherd, Caribbean Freedom: Society and Economy from Emancipation to the
Present, 2nd ed. (Kingston: Ian Randle Publishers, 1993), 314.
not operating under a protected market anymore. Meaning not being the exclusive, or favored, supplier to

their respective metropoles. For the major markets in Europe buying the beet sugar being produced closer

to home, which had both lower production and transportation costs leading to an overall lower price,

simply made more sense economically. Whereas the beet sugar industry was gaining a lot of economic

support, sugar cane planters were finding it very hard to find capital investment to run their plantations

with, and, as will be shown, capital was a necessity for one of the measures taken to keep the industry

alive. Even when planters could get investments a combination of the deflated sugar prices in the

consistently oversaturated market and their inability to produce and sell enough of their product led to

them ending up in debt much of the time. War and revolution were another problem but one that only

effected certain areas. The French West Indies suffered the most from this. St. Domingue, present day

Haiti, once being the leading sugar supplier in the world suffered a devastating collapse as a result of the

revolutions that took place there, which purposefully destroyed cane plantations.

The Solutions Implemented by Planters:

The methods employed by the planters can be placed into one of two categories. One category

being changes in business strategy and the other being improvement in production methods.

Changes in Business Strategy:

For the planters the labor shortage was a concern that had to be addressed immediately for

obvious reasons. If they didn’t have anyone to work the fields and they couldn’t produce, then they

couldn't make any money. Their immediate reaction was to try and convince the slaves to stay for wages,

but this didn’t work for the most part because they did not have enough money to pay them the wages

they wanted. One solution that they turned to was trying to encourage immigration into the Caribbean.

Their preference was for white Europeans, and much of the Caribbean, countries like Jamaica in

particular, lacked a middle class and the planters wanted a buffer group between themselves and the
former slaves5. European immigration was not an option before the abolition of slavery because European

society saw the institution of slavery as retrograde 6. Aside from Europe planters tried to get immigrants

from India, China, and Africa. Decreasing the size of holdings was another common measure taken by

planters immediately following the labor shortage. They decided to begin focusing more on increasing the

amount they produced through the efficiency with which they produced rather than sheer land usage.

Later on when centralized factories were introduced and the planters only job was to supply the cane this

was reverted and plantations were consolidated.

A key for the survival of the cane industry was to turn away from relying heavily on its onld

markets for not only customers but sources of capital investment. Colonies such as Cuba benefited

heavily from capital arriving from North America, who were also the new primary market for much of the

Caribbean. During the outbreaks of war, the demand for sugar usually increased dramatically, which was

beneficial for cane planters at the time. Despite this it had a negative impact in the long run because

planters ended up buying more unproductive land for use while the demand was high which later became

a liability when the wars ended. This brings us to debt problem many planters faced. The Encumbered

Estates Act of 1854 was a measure that helped to largely prevent plantations from being abandoned

because of their large amounts of debt. The act allowed proprietors to have their holding sold by decree

and the buyer would receive them with a clean slate and in Jamaica this act was responsible for the resale

of one hundred and forty-eight plantations.7

A last ditch effort that started to be used in British territories like St. Lucia and Tobago around

the 1840s was metayage. This was a system where the planters gave out small holdings to peasant farmers

and provided them with the tools necessary with the expectation that in return they would receive the

harvest from these holdings8. In this system the owners of the plantations and the people who actually

5
J. H. Galloway, The Sugar Cane Industry (New York City: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 124-25.
6
Ibid
7
J. H. Galloway, The Sugar Cane Industry (New York City: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 148-49.

8
Hilary Beckles and Verene Shepherd, Caribbean Freedom: Society and Economy from Emancipation to the
Present, 2nd ed. (Kingston: Ian Randle Publishers, 1993), 64-66.
worked the plantations functioned as business partners where the laborer “shared with the planter the

risks, expenses and profits of sugar production”9. Planters never had the intention of this system becoming

permanent, even if this became the case sometimes.

With the high cost that came with the technological advancements a gradual separation between

the cultivation of sugar cane and its transformation into sugar appeared. Planters could not afford the

various expenses involved in maintaining a factor and instead simply became the suppliers to the

factories, which led to the creation of centralized factories 10. This switch also meant that the large

corporations who were the only ones able to finance the large central factories became a large part of the

industry and pushed out many of the planters.

9
Ibid
10
J. H. Galloway, The Sugar Cane Industry (New York City: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 139.
Improvement in Production Methods:

New Technology:

 Steampower

o Was used to power mills

o Was very efficient but required vast changes to the system of mill that sugar can

planters had previously used.

 Vacuum Pan

o Lowered the pressure around the cane juice which lowered the boiling point

 Centrifugal

o Could separate the molasses from the sugar crystals several thousand times faster

than the drainage system used before (2,300 kg/h)

Chemistry:

 Cane breeding:

o The planters continuously searched for strains of cane that were more resistant to

disease

o Creole cane was succeeded by Otaheiti, which was in turn replaced by Cheribon

after the 1840s when it fell susceptible to disease.

o The scientific breeding of the Cheribon variety of cane led to its increased

resistance to disease.
Assessment and Conclusion:

All of the methods suggested by planters sound very effective in theory, but are often

complicated in execution. For example, an attempt to encourage immigration to the Caribbean to find a

new source of labor is perfectly logical, but convincing Europeans to migrate to an area where the

mortality rate from disease is very high and the conditions are not what they are accustomed to is very

difficult. Migration to the relatively new colony of the North America was much higher because of its

milder climate. Attempts to try and get indentured labor from countries like Sierra Leone in Africa did not

work in the British and French West Indies, because policy makers in the respective mother countries saw

the opportunity for this system to be corrupted into a new form of slavery to be too high 11. Attempts to

encourage immigration from India and China were much more successful. India alone contributed more

than three times as many indentured servants as did Africa with thirty-six and a half thousand as opposed

to only eleven thousand12. When India ceased to be a viable source of labor in 1885, this being the result

of Indian laborers not being able to get back home easily, it was subsequently replaced by China. Part of

the planter’s tactic was to continuously stream labor into the country so that wages could be lowered and

lower their overall cost of production, and in this they were often successful.

The metayage system that was tried by many planters in desperation had the potential to be a very

useful system. It could have changed the antagonistic relationship between the planters and the newly

formed peasant class at the time, but the planters were only able to see the peasant class as a threat 13. The

former slaves and negroes who refused to work on plantations because they preferred to be their own

master, reacted positively to a system where they were given the tools to be able to oversee over their

own operations and be partners with the planters. The system did not take off and remained a temporary

measure due to the social stigmas involved.

11
J. H. Galloway, The Sugar Cane Industry (New York City: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 125-26.
12
J. H. Galloway, The Sugar Cane Industry (New York City: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 126-27.
13
Hilary Beckles and Verene Shepherd, Caribbean Freedom: Society and Economy from Emancipation to the
Present, 2nd ed. (Kingston: Ian Randle Publishers, 1993), 64-65.
 One would assume that the technological and chemical innovations in the process of cultivating

and producing sugar cane would be a large part of keeping the sugar industry in the Caribbean alive, and

this assumption would be correct for the most part. However, these innovations were not so much the

planter’s attempts to improve their own industry and gain an advantage over their competitors as it was

them being forced to make changes to the way in which they produced in order to be able to compete on a

world stage. The innovations were essentially part of a game of keep up the planters were playing with

the beet sugar industry who were the source of most of the innovations, and they had to do this while

fighting the other crises of the time. Aside from this some of the innovations themselves were impractical

for a planter to implement despite their advantages. The vacuum pan for example while minimizing the

amount of fuel used in the process still cost around forty thousand pounds for only the most basic model 14

In looking at how each measure combated the specific problem it was designed to address there

are varying degrees of success. The technological innovations for the most part were a necessary

advancement for the cane industry, but they still resulted in the significantly weakened status of the

planters whom could be considered as part of the original cane industry. The Changes in tactics used with

regard to fighting for policies to be passed in the sovereign states and finding new labor sources were

possibly what helped most to preserve the industry in Caribbean and were very actually proactive in

contrast to the reactive nature of the technological advancements, which never really put the cane industry

ahead in anyway because they were made for the beet sugar industry anyway.

14
J. H. Galloway, The Sugar Cane Industry (New York City: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 137.
Bibliography:

Galloway, J. H. The Sugar Cane Industry. New York City: Cambridge University Press, 1989.

Beckles, Hilary, and Verene Shepherd. Caribbean Freedom: Society and Economy from
Emancipation to the Present. 2nd ed. Kingston: Ian Randle Publishers, 1993.

Knight, Franklin W., and K.O. Laurence. General History of the Caribbean Nineteenth-Century
Transformations: The Long Nineteenth Century. London: Macmillan Publishers, 2011.