Blood and Sugar: Slavery in the British West Indies

Video Description

This video is sponsored by Ekster! You can get up to 55% off your order with Ekster when you use my code BRANDONF at checkout! https://partner.ekster.com/brandonf ~~Video Description~~ During the Long 18th Century, sugar was a commodity of immense value. Its trade was sufficient to build fortunes and fuel empires, and everyone in the Transatlantic world had some stake in it. Yet the entirety of the sugar trade was reliant on a commerce far darker and more tragic; that of slaves. So deadly were the West Indies, and so harsh was the workload demanded by the sugar plantations, that a constant flow of new slaves from Africa to the New World was required to keep up production. What made conditions on these 'fever islands' so horrible? What did the lives of these slaves look like? And how could such unsustainable practices have possibly been profitable? In this video, we examine the grim and tragic institution of slavery in the British West Indies during the Long 18th Century. ~~Sources & Further Reading On This Topic~~ All of the primary sources I used in the production of this video can be found as free PDFs here: https://www.nativeoak.org/library/dfe78825-acc9-4ea4-9a8c-7c424e8a2863 Articles used: - Sugar and Power in the Early Modern World: https://dcc.newberry.org/?p=16944 - Slavery in the Caribbean, from National Museums Liverpool: https://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/archaeologyofslavery/slavery-caribbean - Sugar Plantations, National Museums Liverpool: https://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/archaeologyofslavery/sugar-plantations - Population and Labour in the British Caribbean in the Early 19th Century: https://www.nber.org/system/files/chapters/c9689/c9689.pdf - The Feeding of Slave Populations in the United States, the Caribbean, and Brazil: https://www.scielo.org.mx/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S1405-22532013000200001 - Slave Mortality in Nineteenth-Century Grenada: https://www.scielo.org.mx/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S1405-22532013000200001 - The Sugar Revolution in New England: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/business-history-review/article/sugar-revolution-in-new-england-barbados-massachusetts-bay-and-the-atlantic-sugar-economy-16001700/C968EB07FA46638EEF0F3040113D2C86 - Sweet Business: Quantifying the Value Addes in the British Colonial Sugar Trade: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/revista-de-historia-economica-journal-of-iberian-and-latin-american-economic-history/article/abs/sweet-business-quantifying-the-value-added-in-the-british-colonial-sugar-trade-in-the-18th-century/9842DA9586360CF67CFB0A968BC6860F#access-block ~~Other Links & Contact Info~~ `Find a free digital library, shop for books and merchandise, and learn more about this channel's charity work at: ` https://www.nativeoak.org/ You can directly support my work by becoming a Patron of this channel: ` https://www.patreon.com/BrandonF You may also give a one-time tip here: ` https://ko-fi.com/brandonf ~~Timestamps~~ 00:00 Intro 01:48 Sponsored Message 03:39 The Condition of Slaves in the West Indies 15:43 The Mortality of the Slave Population 28:07 The Birth Rate of the Slave Population 37:07 The Profitability of the Sugar Trade 41:55 Conclusion