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Sunday, February 9, 2014
Thursday, February 6, 2014
Colonial Era Macroeconomics of Agriculture: Sugarcane
Sugarcane crop
Plantation
Sugar Trade in the eyes of Mark Johnston
"Soon after Columbus returned from his first voyage to the new world it became apparent to old world investors and the Spanish crown that the new territories could not be exploited as had been hoped. Indeed, Magellan’s circumnavigation of 1519-1522 proved that the territories visited by Columbus weren’t even parts of Asia, but a continent that could offer little in the way of spices and manufactured goods such as were exported from east Asia. However, the Europeans quickly realized that the new world possessed potential of a different sort: the production of sugar cane. Consequently, the plantation system and the sugar refining industry, rather than the harvesting of spices and silk production, were destined to shape the economy and society of Brazil and the West Indies.
The European discovery and colonization of Madeira and the Canary Islands would prove fateful precedents for the new world, because the plantation system and colonial governments instituted on these islands became models for the great sugar plantations in the new world.2 Since sugar cane had been introduced to Madeira and the Canaries after their colonization during the last half of the fifteenth century, the techniques of sugar production, exploitation of labor, and economic organization developed on these islands were easily exported to the new world.3 Ultimately, the adoption of these production techniques and the system of colonial government from the Atlantic islands, with the institution of slavery, made sugar production the most profitable cultivation in either the Americas or Europe.
The earliest large-scale production of sugar was established in Brazil, along the Atlantic coasts surrounding Bahia and Pernambuco. Although sugar cane was reputedly first planted in Brazil in 1516, it was apparently done as much for strategic as economic reasons, because the European powers were struggling for legal and economic claims to territory in the Americas.5 For the next four decades, trade with Brazil centered around the harvest of dyewood, since the demand and prices for sugar had slumped in Europe.But, by the sixteenth century, both demand and prices had risen because refined sugar was replacing honey in most recipes and was increasingly used as a sweetener in jams, jellies and other popular food products. The first commercial production of sugar in the new world was undertaken in 1550, when the Portuguese Donatarios built mills near Pernambuco and São Vicente along the Atlantic coast of Brazil.7 This early production was derived principally from techniques developed in Madeira, based upon a system resembling sharecropping, where the owner, or senhor de engenho, leased his land to a number of smaller planters in return for a portion of the sugar produced.
By the middle of the seventeenth century the Brazilian sugar industry had begun to expand rapidly with support of capital from the Dutch East India Company, which had seized Pernambuco from the Portuguese in 1630, and the Dutch importation of slaves from equatorial Africa. In 1612 the total production of sugar in Brazil had reached 14,000 tons, and by the 1640s Pernambuco alone exported more than 24,000 tons of sugar annually to Amsterdam.
However, the 1660 the focus of sugar production began to shift from Brazil to Barbados and other islands of the West Indies. Unfortunately, this process is not well understood, primarily due to a lack of documentation. It has been suggested that Brazil suffered from economic stagnation because of higher production costs, decreasing yields and general trends in investment that negatively affected sugar production. Furthermore, the expulsion of the Dutch from Pernambuco in 1654 and the subsequent disruption in trade led the Dutch to focus their capital investments in the West Indies.
Surviving evidence shows that despite increases in production, Brazil was not able to keep the sugar refineries in Amsterdam adequately supplied, forcing the Dutch refiners to look elsewhere for the product.Barbados, which had been developing the sugar industry under the leadership of the Englishman John Drax, proved to be a perfect complement. Drax, who had been a student of Portuguese and Dutch production methods and organization in Pernambuco, adapted sugar production to the limited resources of the islands and proved that, despite their relatively small size, the West Indies were capable of producing significant amounts of muscovado, or raw sugar. His adaptations included the abandonment of the Pernambuco model, which had called for self-sufficient plantations, as the limited timber resources and food production on the islands made such a system impractical.
Once established on the Caribbean island, sugar production increased rapidly, with Barbados experiencing an increase from 7,000 to 12,000 tons produced per year between 1655 and 1700. Even more remarkable is Guadeloupe, which increased its exports from 2,000 tons in 1674 to 10,000 tons in the early eighteenth century, with assistance from Martinique.
Although Brazil remained the largest exporter of sugar, it was no longer dominant in the face of Dutch, and later French and English, competition from the Caribbean. The Dutch, French and English ultimately proved better able to endure the steadily decreasing prices resulting from the rapid rise in supply due to the geographical advantages of their proximity to Europe and the slave trade and their royal support in the form of official trade monopolies. However, the legacy of Brazil in the sugar trade remained significant, as the Portuguese and Dutch pioneered the plantation system from old world examples and adapted it to the special conditions of the new world. More importantly, this legacy is evident in the development of colonial society in the America. The plantation system of Brazil and the Caribbean, like the hacienda system on the continent, would endure for centuries as the model for agricultural production and rural society. The introduction of slavery would likewise leave a significant, most unfortunate legacy in the new world. Ultimately, sugar production provided one of the original means and motivations for European expansion, colonization and control in the new world, precipitating a course of events that would forever shape the destiny of the Western Hemisphere." --Mark Johnston
Colonial Era Macroeconomics of Agriculture: Tobacco
Tobacco Advertisement
Tobacco Plant
Tobacco Quotes
There is an herb called uppowoc, which sows itself. In the West Indies it has several names, according to the different places where it grows and is used, but the Spaniards generally call it tobacco. Its leaves are dried, made into powder, and then smoked by being sucked through clay pipes into the stomach and head. The fumes purge superfluous phlegm and gross humors from the body by opening all the pores and passages. Thus its use not only preserves the body, but if there are any obstructions it breaks them up. By this means the natives keep in excellent health, without many of the grievous diseases which often afflict us in England.
– Thomas Hariot, A Brief and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia (1588)
Smoking is a custom loathsome to the eye, hateful to the nose, harmful to the brain, dangerous to the lungs, and in the black, stinking fume thereof nearest resembling the horrible Stygian smoke of the pit that is bottomless.
– James I of England, A Counterblaste to Tobacco(1604)
Tobacco Trade
"When Sir Francis Drake returned to England from the New World he had with him two plants never before seen in Europe, namely the potato and tobacco. England’s reaction to the plants was echoed all through out Europe. The potato was seen as poisonous while tobacco was seen with wonder and amazement.1 In this essay, I will give the brief history of the development of the tobacco trade during the 15th, 16th, and 17th centuries and explain what steps Europeans took to control that trade from interlopers.
Tobacco was first introduced to Europeans in 1492 when Columbus landed in the Americas. Columbus wrote in his diary, on October 15th, 1492, that he observed an Indian sailing in a canoe with water, food, and tobacco leaves.2 Use of tobacco spread rapidly among the Spanish colonists and in 1531 its cultivation began in Santo Domingo. In 1526 Gonzalo Ferdandez de Oveido y Valdez noted that his fellow Spaniards were turned into drunks by tobacco. Bartolome de las Casas observed the following year that the colonists were developing a strong dependence on it and that it was hard to give up.
During the 16th century, tobacco use spread throughout all of Europe. It arrived in France in 1556, in Portugal in 1558, in Spain in 1559, and in England in 1565. By 1571 it had spread to nearly all parts of Europe.4 Not only did its usage spread quickly but also it quickly came to be seen as a cure for many major illnesses.5 In 1595, Anthony Chute published Tobacco in which he argued that physicians were keeping tobacco’s use a secret because they feared it would put them out of business.
The 17th century saw the organization of the tobacco trade and the implementation of new laws regulating the sale of tobacco. In 1614 Spain proclaimed Seville the tobacco capital of the world. All tobacco produced for sale in New Spain had to first go through Seville before moving on to the rest of Europe. France and England passed analogous laws. King James I of England was the first to tax tobacco while King Louis XIV was the first to make its distribution and sale a state run monopoly. Laws restricting the cultivation of tobacco to the Americas were passed during the second half of the 1600’s in an effort to insure a steady high quality supply. During this time period the Tionontati, an Indian tribe located in what is today south-eastern Canada, produced tobacco for sale in Europe and were known by the French as the tobacco people.
Efforts at limiting the consumption of tobacco for medicinal purposes during the 17th century failed all over Europe. In Turkey one could be beheaded for smoking in public. In Russia and Austria one could be fined, jailed, or tortured and in England King James I (the same king who realized that taxing tobacco made lots of money for the government) wrote about tobacco’s horribly addictive properties and the terrible black soot that it left in one’s lungs. The Catholic Church even tried its hand at limiting the use of tobacco by proclaiming its everyday use to be sinful. Few people listened, as there were no biblical passages that talked about the evils of smoking or sniffing tobacco.8
Notwithstanding efforts designed to curb the use of tobacco, its use rose tremendously during the 17th century. In 1614 Jamestown colony sent its first shipment of tobacco to England. It was rather modest in size. 1624 saw 200,000 pounds sold to England while 1638 saw 3,000,000 pounds sold. During the 1680’s Jamestown was producing over 25,000,000 pounds of tobacco per year for sale in Europe." --Mike Davey
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