{"title":"The Rise of \"King Sugar\" and Enslaved Labor in Early English Jamaica","authors":"Nuala Zahedieh","doi":"10.1353/eam.2022.0020","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"abstract:Richard S. Dunn's portrayal of the rise of \"king sugar\" in the early English West Indies accords the crop a deterministic role in the entire region's development with a sugar revolution used to explain broad patterns of economic and social change: above all the shift from indentured to enslaved labor. The sugar revolution concept, despite rigorous reassessment, retains purchase and the broad historiography follows Dunn's claim that, after a brief period of plunder, Jamaica settled into sugar monoculture by the 1690s to give rise to \"the starkest and most exploitive slave system in British America.\" This article draws on research of the last fifty years and new data to reassess this narrative and finds it wanting. Trade and population figures show that \"king sugar\" was no victor in early English Jamaica, which was a dual economy with a relatively small-scale, diversified agricultural sector alongside a strong entrepôt trade with the adjacent Spanish empire. Nonetheless, this diverse economy rapidly became a fully fledged slave society, in which the unfree outnumbered the free by 1673, and a harsh regulatory regime was put in place. The experience of the enslaved was far more varied than is commonly understood, and the complexities, contradictions, and collaborations involved in the process of building Jamaica's uniquely exploitive labor regime cannot be explained by a sugar revolution.","PeriodicalId":43255,"journal":{"name":"Early American Studies-An Interdisciplinary Journal","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2000,"publicationDate":"2022-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Early American Studies-An Interdisciplinary Journal","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1353/eam.2022.0020","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"HISTORY","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
abstract:Richard S. Dunn's portrayal of the rise of "king sugar" in the early English West Indies accords the crop a deterministic role in the entire region's development with a sugar revolution used to explain broad patterns of economic and social change: above all the shift from indentured to enslaved labor. The sugar revolution concept, despite rigorous reassessment, retains purchase and the broad historiography follows Dunn's claim that, after a brief period of plunder, Jamaica settled into sugar monoculture by the 1690s to give rise to "the starkest and most exploitive slave system in British America." This article draws on research of the last fifty years and new data to reassess this narrative and finds it wanting. Trade and population figures show that "king sugar" was no victor in early English Jamaica, which was a dual economy with a relatively small-scale, diversified agricultural sector alongside a strong entrepôt trade with the adjacent Spanish empire. Nonetheless, this diverse economy rapidly became a fully fledged slave society, in which the unfree outnumbered the free by 1673, and a harsh regulatory regime was put in place. The experience of the enslaved was far more varied than is commonly understood, and the complexities, contradictions, and collaborations involved in the process of building Jamaica's uniquely exploitive labor regime cannot be explained by a sugar revolution.
理查德·邓恩(Richard S. Dunn)对早期英属西印度群岛“糖王”崛起的描述,使这种作物在整个地区的发展中扮演了决定性的角色,一场糖革命被用来解释经济和社会变革的广泛模式:最重要的是从契约劳工到奴役劳工的转变。糖革命的概念,尽管经过严格的重新评估,仍然保留了购买,广泛的历史记载遵循邓恩的说法,在短暂的掠夺之后,牙买加在17世纪90年代陷入了糖单一文化,并产生了“英属美洲最残酷、最具剥削性的奴隶制度”。本文利用过去50年的研究和新的数据来重新评估这种叙述,并发现它的不足之处。贸易和人口数据显示,在早期的英属牙买加,“糖王”并没有获胜,这是一个双重经济,拥有相对小规模、多样化的农业部门,同时与邻近的西班牙帝国有着强大的entrepôt贸易。尽管如此,这种多样化的经济迅速成为一个成熟的奴隶社会,到1673年,不自由的人数超过了自由的人数,严厉的监管制度也到位了。被奴役者的经历远比人们通常理解的要复杂得多,在牙买加建立独特的剥削劳工制度的过程中所涉及的复杂性、矛盾性和合作性无法用一场糖革命来解释。