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Dear reader, we move a step forward in our reflection on human rights (see last issue) by pointing out how past and modern slavery is related: through the white staff that makes so tasty a cup of tea - sugar. But is a teaspoon of sugar enough to get poor countries swallowing the bitter taste of the EU common agricultural policies (CAP) and the US farm bill?
Slavery and Sugar …
Past legacies link sugar to slavery. "I do not think that the doctrine of equality of man was really intended to include racial equality", these words of Australia's first Prime Minister, Edmond Barton, still haunt Australian immigration policy to this day. Slave-like labour helped establish many of Australia's primary industries, and the sugar industry was no exception. Ship captains trading in the South Pacific quickly saw the easy money to be made for providing South Sea islanders for this emerging industry: a potentially cheap labour force that was better able than the Europeans to endure the climate and the backbreaking work. Before South Sea Islanders arrived there were 20 acres of land under sugarcane in Queensland and New South Wales. By 1900 there were around 135,000 acres producing 140.000 tonnes of sugar.
Between the 16th and the 19th centuries upwards of 10 million Africans were enslaved by Europeans and transported to the New World. Two thirds of the slaves shipped to Americas in the 1770s worked on sugar plantations. In 1771 alone Liverpool sent over 100 ships to Africa to capture more than 28,000 slaves; London 58 ships for 8,000; Bristol 23 ships for 9,000; even the small port of Lancaster sent 4 ships for 950 slaves. By 1667 there were 745 mostly British owners of sugar plantations in Barbados using over 80,000 slaves. In 1655 the British invaded Jamaica and introduced slave sugar there too.
The infamous triangular trade got underway: slaves were taken from Africa to the New World, commodities (of which sugar was the most lucrative) from the New World to Europe, and manufactured goods like cloth and weaponry from Europe back to Africa. Enormous profits were made, primarily in Europe, from each side of the triangle.