Matthew Parker writes about the history of the sugar industry and the slave era in the West Indies in the kind of detail I've never seen before. Parker's detailed accounts of the birth and rise of an industry powerful enough to have influenced Great Britain's North American policy, and the men who shaped that industry, makes The Sugar Barons a captivating read. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in American or Caribbean history, or anyone curious to know why sugar was, at one time, "the axis on which the world spun." This book is shocking. It's the history of the sugar industry in the West Indies, largely in Barbados. And as such is about the history of slavery. It details how what began as effectively enslavement of Irish indentured servants set up a culture where people became inured to cruelty and set the stage for the enslavement of people "imported" from Africa. It's very startling and ugly, but the roots of the world of today are here easily recognized. The number of workers needed to produce sugar meant that the number of people enslaved far outnumbered plantation owners so that a culture of fear was created to keep people from revolting. This was done through purposeful cruelty. How racism was fomented in order to keep the Africans and Irish from joining forces in revolt. (Descriptions of how people revolted in spite of this are very moving.) Many new understandings-- the plantation owners could not afford to pay workers. (Very much brings Walmart to mind and for me raised a red flag about how important what's happening globally now in that regard is and how we better not ignore it), the fact that sugar is addictive, the issue of the Boston Tea Party relating to the fact that tea was a vehicle for sugar, that sugar made factory workers more "maleable" and willing to work to afford sugar, that 1/6 of poor family's income went on sugar. It's recounted how a British merchant told an Arab slave trader long before the sugar industry had really burgeoned in Barbados that his people didn't enslave others, and how the addictiveness of the product and the money therefore entailed made for a global enslavement industry and a Britain that was the world's biggest slave trader and biggest sugar consumer. This book is a "must read."
What do You think about The Sugar Barons (2011)?
An interesting examination of a chapter in history that I didn't know much about; very fascinating.
—Ashki
Alongside good history of the British Caribbean, much insight into the American Revolution.
—YNAVED
The harrowing history of the substance that is killing us.
—laundryman
