Sugar and Cotton: How the Industrial Revolution was Built on Slavery
The Industrial Revolution began around 250 years ago with the introduction of textile factories within England. Over the next two and a half centuries, industrialism would shape every aspect of our lives, providing us with the means to live within our modern society.
Many like to focus upon the European conditions and aspects that allowed for this revolution to flourish, talking about the conditions within England that allowed for such a strange innovation to sweep the continent. They like to focus on Welsh iron works and Birmingham textile mills. On railways and geography.
This article is going to focus on something a little bit different. The purpose of this article is to examine the less than pleasant role that slavery played within English industrial development.
To do this, I’ll be examining two key components of industrialism as it relates to forced labour.
The first will be a discussion of sugar plantations, which are essentially agricultural factories, and their role in enriching the United Kingdom and providing the capital needed for industrial growth. The second will be a look at the role of cotton from the Southern US and its importance in the burgeoning English textile industry.
Together these two components were integral to fostering the conditions for English industrial development. A situation that was not unknown to the contemporaries of this time.
I believe this quote from English Poet, William Bagshaw Stevens sums things up nicely.
“Throughout this large built Town every Brick is cemented with the blood and sweat of Negro slaves.” — Stevens, 1797
He was talking about the role that slavery played in the development of his city, Liverpool, one of many communities which prospered from Transatlantic trade during this period. It, along with Glasgow and Bristol, benefited greatly from the import of plantation goods.
Now let’s talk about sugar, cotton, and industrialism.
Sugar: White Gold Mined with Black Bodies
When people think of plantations, they usually visualize a rolling field with a singular crop being grown and harvested in vast quantities. This crop would then be shipped back to Europe to be processed and sold.
In reality, plantations were more complex than this being a site of both cultivation and processing with management structures and divisions of labour.
For example, with tobacco, not only was the plant harvested on site but it was also cured and packaged to make it last longer and survive the journey across the Atlantic.
All tropical staples had a similar process, some more complex than others.
What we’ll be focusing on, however, is that of sugar. Sugar was the biggest money-maker in the Caribbean and utilized 70% of all the slaves coming from Africa.
Starting in the early 17th century, demand for sugar grew within England and Europe. It was a lucrative business and one which many investors seemed interested to capitalize upon. Within the Caribbean this intense demand and investment led to six changes in the structures of life.
Some of which can be seen as forebearers to industrialism within England itself.
First there was the move from diversified agriculture to monoculture crops focused on sugarcane. This was a move to a uniformity of product and also one which focused on regional specialization. Both of which would be aspects of industrialism nearly two centuries later.
Second, there was a move from small family farms to larger plantations. This can be seen as a mirror to the move from small cottage manufacturing in the UK to larger factory affairs.
Third, there was a move from free labour to slave labour.
Fourth, settlements went from being sparse to densely populated within the Caribbean islands. Yet again, this mirrors the growth of cities during the Industrialization of England as settlements grew from rather modest origins to blossoming metropolises like London and Manchester.
Fifth, there was the emigration of white settlers to temperate colonies and the forced immigration of a black populace into the region. Yet, again this mirrors the massive migration of people from the rural UK to urban industrial settlements.
And lastly, there was the move from low to high value per capita output.
Over the course of a century, more than 3900 sugar plantations would crop up around the Caribbean. England alone would accrue an annual income of £2.5 million sterling from sugar ventures by the eve of the American Revolution. Or to put it another way, 60% of the UK’s trade was focused on plantations or supporting plantations.
And not only did the British profit from the sugar, they also profited from the development of industries on their own island which supported the slave system.
In Bristol, Glasgow, and Liverpool thousands of jobs were supported by the plantation system, allowing for these cities to blossom and prosper. Industries popped up that made all range of products from iron shackles to new ships to firms that furnished the plantation manors.
“If we have no Negroes, we can have no sugar, tobacco, rum etc. Consequently, the public revenue, arising from the importation of plantation produce, will be wiped out. And hundreds of thousands of Britons making goods for the triangular trade will lose their jobs and go a begging.” –Malachi Postlethwaite, economist, 1746
And in turn, the profits made both in the colonies, and in Britain itself, were invested back into the British domestic economy.
Infrastructure was financed using capital acquired from the plantation economy with early railway barons, like Gladstone and Moss having acquired their wealth through the Triangle Trade.
Banks grew in power and wealth during this period due to the investments made from traders and merchants with firms like Barclays, Lloyd’s and the Bank of England all generating substantial profits from the transatlantic slave trade. On top of this, they also financed and loaned money to help establish further plantations.
Investments into steel-making were made by figures like Anthony Bacon, Gilbert Frankling, and Richard Pennants. These figures all have direct involvement with the slave trade with Richard’s even founding a sizeable Jamaican plantation. On top of which, the metal produced was used to manufacture chains, shackles, and construct slave ships.
And even innovations into technology were not spared from the baggage of this unsavoury institution. The development of the Boulton and Watt’s steam engine, for example, was financed by the William Deacon bank which was established by wealthy plantation owners.
On top of this, James Watt himself was a member of the slave owning aristocracy. His father was involved in the institution dating back to the 1740s and his brother managed the business until his untimely death in the Caribbean in the 1760s at which point James headed things. The Watt family would continue to make money from the plantation system until the very end of slavery, selling steam engines to plantations all the way up until 1803.
I mention Watt specifically because the steam engine was actually used later in the cultivation and processing of sugar on plantations and such machines would be used to augment and improve the productivity of the slave workforce.
Modernization did not bring an end to slavery but merely found new ways to extract additional wealth from them.
We’ve talked a lot about how the wealth from sugar helped finance the industrial revolution but it’s also important to realize that sugar was the first crop to be mechanized and industrialized in the world. It was very much the testing bed for future mechanization in agriculture.
To discuss how mechanization was brought into sugar processing we must first get ourselves acquainted with the process by which sugar was grown, harvested, and then processed by slaves.
Sugar production began in the fields where the ground needed to be dug up, hoed, planted, and then fertilized with manure. This job was done by slave gangs working under white overseers and fellow blacks who held a higher role in the plantation hierarchy.
It would take 14–18 months for this freshly planted sugarcane to mature. Though once it had, work came fast and it came hard. Sugarcane, once matured, would ferment and spoil within a matter of days. Which meant that the harvesting and processing needed to be done quickly. It wasn’t uncommon for those indentured to the plantations to work 18-hour-days or be worked for up to 48-hours straight.
The sugarcane was harvested with machetes and then loaded onto carts where it was taken to the sugar mill, a massive structure in the centre of the plantation.
At this mill, the cane was first crushed by rollers where it was converted into a sugary juice. This was one of the most dangerous aspects of sugar production as the crushing machines could catch slaves in its mechanisms and flatten them. It was so dangerous that a second slave would stand nearby, ready with a machete in order to amputate limbs that got caught in the machinery.
The juice was then ferried to the boiling house, a sweltering room in an already sweltering climate. Here, the juice was put in large metal pans where lime and ash were added and then heated to remove impurities. The juice was then ladled into a series of five large metal basins to cool and separate.
Two substances would be born from this process. The first was molasses which was either used to manufacture rum or exported elsewhere to manufacture rum. The other was something called muscovado which was the portable unrefined sugar that was sent to Europe.
Once in Europe it would then be refined into sugar proper. A process which resulted in over a hundred and twenty sugar factories being established within the United Kingdom, furthering its own industrial development.
The work was brutal, incredibly so. To quote a contemporary source:
“If a mill-feeder be catch’d by the finger, his whole body is drawn in, and is squees’d to pieces. If a Boyler gets any part into the scalding Sugar, it sticks like Glew, or Birdlime, and ’tis hard to save either Limb or Life.” — 1727
What this quote also reveals is a distinct division of labour, something we would see within industrial era factories. There were distinct growers/harvesters, mill-feeders, and boylers (boilers). And also, a cruel management structure of slaves, senior slaves (who led work gangs), and overseers.
Where the modernization of sugar manufacturing comes in is during the crushing phase. Initially, the crushers were powered by animals with cows and horses churning the engines that powered the machines.
In 1663, the first innovation would arrive with the first windmill being constructed in Barbados. This allowed for nature to run the machinery used to crush cane. And within a decade more than 260 windmills were on the island.
The second innovation, and the one we’re more familiar with, is the introduction of the steam engine. The first steam powered sugar mill was opened in 1768 in Jamaica. This tool allowed for the greater extraction of sugar. Though it still required slave inputs in the form of fuel to keep the machines running and within the planting, harvesting, mill-feeding, and boiling phases.
But sugar is just one side of a coin. So now we must turn our attention towards cotton.
Way Down South in the Land of Cotton…
What started the Industrial Revolution was the manufacturing of cotton textiles within the United Kingdom in factories and mills across the island. By 1860, 4 million Britons (of 22 million) worked in an industry that was either directly or indirectly supported by cotton.
And the United States was instrumental to this. On the eve of the Civil War, two-thirds of cotton was produced in the US and 80% of Britain’s imports were grown on southern slave plantations.
Cotton and the United States actually had a relatively new relationship at this point. It wasn’t until the end of 18th century that cotton was seen as a viable industry in the new republic but it caught on quickly. Between 1803–1937, cotton was the largest export for the United States of America.
In 1850, 1.8 million of the nation’s 3.2 million African slaves were tasked with cotton production and by 1860, 2 billion lbs of the stuff were grown annually, destined for mills in both Old and New England. It can not be overstated just how important slavery was to the Industrial Revolution.
When the Civil War kicked off, Britain’s supply of cotton dropped by 70%, sending whole regions of the nation spiralling into destitution and poverty as mills were forced to shut down. The war also saw much suffering in New England and New York, whose ports and factories relied upon the institution they were so fervent to destroy.
Europe and the North both benefited immensely from slavery, not just because of the cheap cotton but because of Southern money’s desire to buy Northern and European products. There was no quibble about selling corn, pork, and clothes to feed and dress slaves. Nor were there any problems from artisans and factories that furnished the manors and homes of the southern aristocracy and its middle class.
And like with sugar, slave money was responsible for great leaps and bounds in investments into infrastructure and industry. It was because of slave money that places like New Orleans, Memphis, and St. Louis rose into prominent port cities.
It also sponsored a mammoth boom in shipbuilding which used Northern iron and steel in its projects. In 1817, there were 17 steamships prowling the Mississippi. By 1837, there were 700. And by 1860, there were more than 3500.
And like with sugar, cotton was another crop to industrialize early. Though progress meant nothing for improving labour conditions. All it meant for the slaves was that they could now process 50lbs of cotton a day rather than 1lb. That being the figure of improvement that Eli Whitney’s cotton gin allowed for.
It is hard to understate just how much value the United States derived from slavery. In 1860, on the eve of the Civil War, the value of slaves in the United States was three times greater than the amount invested in all US banks, seven times greater than the amount of currency in circulation, and forty-eight times greater than all the expenditures of the US government for that year.
Nor is it an understatement to talk about how much the English garnered from slave cotton. During this period, 40% of British exports were derived from cotton textiles. Slave cotton was also one of two factors which led to the British textile industry usurping global dominance during this period (with the other being crippling protectionist tariffs).
From York to New York, slave cotton was the fuel that allowed the Industrial Revolution to flourish and for the UK to gain a hegemonic status in global affairs.
Conclusion
Many see the Industrial Revolution as the peak of the Enlightenment. A period of great change that ushered in reform and the betterment of human life. Many talk about the countless people pulled out of poverty by the mills, forges, and factories of Europe and the United States.
However, this progress was born on the backs of slaves. If it were not for the theft of labour from more than twenty-million Africans there would’ve been no Industrial Revolution.
At first, we discussed the topic of sugar. Sugar was grown and processed using coerced, and often brutal, labour. And it enriched the United Kingdom, both from the value of the product itself and from the hundreds of thousands of Britons who worked to produce clothing, shackles, chains, foodstuff, machinery, and ships to facilitate the trade.
Sugar is just one of two plantation crops, however.
The second is cotton, the most important fibre for the growing textile industries in early industrial England. Cotton which was overwhelmingly grown on slave plantations in the US South and shipped to mills in New England and England itself. At its height, the US grew two-thirds of the world’s supply and when England was denied these resources its industry nearly collapsed.
This article was only a brief look into two facets of slavery and how they impacted our modern world.
If you’re interested in other historical articles, please consider checking out my other works. And if you’re interested in my work in general, consider following me on Twitter, checking out my Carrd, or supporting me on Patreon or Ko-Fi.
Thank you for reading.
