Episode 9: The Sugar

In the 1760s, Jamaica and the islands of the British Caribbean were the crown jewels of Britain's American Empire. And as King George III's ministers searched for solutions to a vexing imperial puzzle and moved to counter a pernicious threat in the aftermath of the Seven Years' War, they looked west from London, to the islands of sugar.

Featuring: Trevor Burnard, Abby Chandler, Mary Draper, Jon Kukla, Andrew O’Shaughnessy, and Brooke Newman.

Voice Actors: Anne Fertig, Norman Rodger, Dan Howlett, Nate Sleeter, and Beau Robbins.

Narrated by Dr. Jim Ambuske

Music by Artlist.io

Find the official transcript here.

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Worlds Turned Upside Down is a production of R2 Studios at the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media at George Mason University.

Episode Transcript

Jim Ambuske (00:00):
This episode of Worlds Turn Upside Down is
supported by the John CarterBrown Library, an independent
research library located on thecampus of Brown University. This
episode of worlds turned upsidedown is dedicated to Trevor
Burnard, colleague, historian,mentor, and friend.

(00:27):
By some accounts, Jamaica was aparadise. In the eighteenth
century, more than one visitorto this crown jewel of British
America fell for the island’swonders. Charles Leslie, a
colonist from the island ofBarbados, marveled at a place

(00:49):
that had, as he wrote, “too manyBeauties, not to engage my
Attention.” The island had “athousand surprising
Curiosities.” What he called “asultry Sun” had blessed Jamaica
“with Varieties few Countriescan boast of.” Rivers descended
from the islands mountainousinterior to coastal plains

(01:12):
filled with fertile soil.Everything seemed to be green. A
look at Thomas Jeffrey’s map ofThe West Indies finds Jamaica
alone among a sea of Spanish andFrench colonies. It lies south
of Cuba and west ofSaint-Domingue, part of the
island of Hispaniola that wouldin time become the republic of

(01:34):
Haiti. In 1655, the Englishconquered Jamaica as part of
Oliver Cromwell’s bid to breakSpanish power in the Caribbean
and secure the island and itssugar fields for England and its
growing American empire. OnJamaica’s southeast coast,
merchant vessels arriving fromGreat Britain, West Africa, or

(01:57):
mainland colonies like RhodeIsland and Providence
Plantations sailed past PortRoyal, on their way into
Kingston Harbor. Port Royal hadonce been Jamaica’s main port,
but in 1692 a catastrophicearthquake and tsunami all but
destroyed the city. The town ofKingston rose to take its place.

(02:18):
By the late 18th centuryKingston, together with the
colony's capital of Spanish Townhad become a center of British
society and culture for thewhite sugar planters who
dominated the island. It was thefourth largest and the
wealthiest city in BritishAmerica. Many years and a
revolution later, a New Jerseyborn British colonists named

(02:41):
Maria Nugent rode on horsebackto the top of a mountain and
cast her gaze across the parishof St. Thomas-in-the-east. From
atop the mountain, she beheld aview she described as really
charming.

Maria Nugent (02:55):
“In front you see a rich vale, full of sugar
estates, the works of which looklike so many little villages,
and the soft bright green of thecanes, from this height, seems
like velvet."

Jim Ambuske (03:08):
The distant sugar fields rippled in the breeze,
almost like ocean waves in thecalm before a storm.

Maria Nugent (03:16):
“Plantain-Garden River runs through the whole,
and loses itself in the sea, atthe bottom of the vale.”

Jim Ambuske (03:22):
But even a view of Paradise has its roots inHell.
Within the “little villages”that Nugent spied from atop the
mountain, enslaved West Africanslabored under brutal conditions
to make the sugar that was atthe heart of the planters’
astounding wealth. The sound ofthe sea breeze was replaced by

(03:43):
the crack of the whip, thegrinding of gears, and fire. On
Jamaica, Barbados, Antigua andother islands throughout the
Caribbean, men called driversdrove organized gangs of
enslaved laborers into the12-foot-high sugarcane fields.
During the harvest season, thedrivers kept watch as the

(04:06):
enslaved use machetes to cut thecrop in a relentless process
that filled fields of sugarcane,and brokeslave bodies. In nearby
mills, great machines powered bywind and water, squeeze the
juice from the harvested cane.The work continued long into the
night. The enslaved poured thejuice into large copper

(04:29):
cauldrons and boiled it overintense fires to remove most of
the water, resulting in ascalding viscous slurry that was
sent to the curing house to cooland crystallize. Juice rendered
from the curing process becamemolasses. Some of it was
distilled into rum. The enslavedpack them into great barrels

(04:51):
called hogsheads and placed themaboard waiting ships. From their
ship captains in their crewsailed on ocean currents that
carry The north to the mainlandcolonies and onto Great Britain.
British subjects on both sidesof the Atlantic use the sugar to
sweetened tea imported fromIndia and China. In the New

(05:11):
England colonies molasses wasdistilled into rum where it was
loaded onto ships bound for WestAfrica. Ship captains from
Providence or Boston used therum and other trade goods to
purchase more enslaved peoplefrom European and African slave
traders, who congregated theircaptives at forts in the middle
of rivers, or along the Africancoast. Most of the enslaved men,

(05:35):
women and children headed forBritish America in this triangle
trade, were destined for thesugar colonies instead of the
mainland. So great was theprofit and demand for their
labor, that sugar planters couldeasily afford to replace workers
who had not survived theprevious year. When the planting
season arrived in early summer,many of the newly purchased

(05:57):
enslaved people were put to workdigging holes for new sugarcane.
The work of turning sugar intomolasses into rum into slaves
began again. And so great wasthe sugar trades importance to
the Empire that when King Georgethe Third's ministers began

(06:18):
searching for new ways toalleviate the financial burden
of defending British America inthe years after the Seven Years
War. They looked west fromLondon, to the islands of sugar.
I'm Jim Ambuske, and this isworld's turned upside down a

(06:41):
podcast about the history of theAmerican Revolution. Episode

Nine (06:45):
The Sugar. In 1762, as the Seven Years’ War neared its end,
Lord Bute, the soon to beformer-prime minister of Great
Britain, tasked Scottish lawyerJohn Campbell with championing
the possibilities that awaitedthem in the Caribbean islands
that France would soon cede tothe British king. With the

(07:08):
stroke of a pen in the Treaty ofParis signed a year later,
Dominica, Grenada, St. Vincent,and Tobago joined Jamaica,
Antigua, Barbados, and themainland colonies as part of
Britain’s American Empire. Inwhat Campbell called his,
“Candid and impartialconsiderations on the nature of
the sugar trade,” he outlinedall the ways that British

(07:31):
subjects benefited from thesugar islands. British
manufacturers made the toolstextiles and other trade goods
used to purchase and clothe andslaved West Africans and the
materials necessary to buildsugar works in plantation homes.
The mainland colonies suppliedthe islands with lumber and
vital foodstuffs, ships andtheir crews delivered goods and

(07:53):
enslaved people to the islandsand carried away sugar and other
commodities for delivery to themainland, or back to Britain. It
was a vital part of the BritishAtlantic economy, one that
touched all the kings subjectsand contributed to the common
Imperial Good. From this vantagepoint, Campbell wrote,

John Campbell (08:12):
“[W]e may from thence form a competent idea of
the prodigious value of oursugar colonies, and a just
conception of their immenseimportance to the grandeur and
prosperity of this[,] theirmother country, to whom from the
circumstance of this relation,they pay without repining such
prodigious tributes.”

Jim Ambuske (08:36):
The immense wealth that flowed out of the sugar
fields enriched planters, keptthousands of British subjects
employed, factories inoperation, and fields under
cultivation. But the productionof these “prodigious tributes”
relied on the continuedimportation of hundreds of
thousands of enslaved people,and a connection with the Mother

(08:57):
Country that made the BritishWest Indies at once a part of
British America, and yetsomething very different. So,
how did the British buildplantation societies in the
Caribbean? How did trade forgebonds between George III’s
subjects on the sugar islandsand those on the mainland? And

(09:17):
why, in the aftermath of theSeven Years’ War, did the king’s
ministers find the sugar tradein need of urgent reform? To
begin answering these questions,we’ll head first to islands like
Antigua and Jamaica, to explorethe places and people who
generated the empire’s sugarwealth. We’ll then sail north,

(09:37):
to colonies like Rhode Island,where mainland merchants played
a central role in making thesugar trade possible. Before
stepping ashore in London, wherethe king’s ministers struggled
to resolve a vexing problem andcounter a pernicious threat. By
the early 1760s, the Britishcolonies in the Caribbean had

(09:58):
become arguably the most waseconomically important provinces
in British America.

Mary Draper (10:03):
On the eve of the American Revolution, there were
26 British colonies. Now we knowabout the 13 that rebelled. But
the majority of the other 13were actually in the Caribbean
where they were incrediblyprofitable sugar plantations.

Jim Ambuske (10:16):
That's Mary Draper, an associate professor of
history at Midwestern StateUniversity.

Mary Draper (10:21):
Barbados had been the most profitable sugar
plantation in the 17th century.But in the 18th century, both
Jamaica and Antiga wereincredibly important colonies in
the British Empire.

Andrew O'Shaughnessy (10:34):
The British Caribbean was at its
height by the end of the SevenYears War. My name is Andrew
O’Shaughnessy. I'm Professor ofHistory at the University of
Virginia. The 1760s would be agreat period prosperity, they
expanded during that war,Britain conquered what were

(10:55):
called the Ceded Islands,Grenada, Dominica, and St
Vincent. Grenada especiallybecame the second most important
of the sugar islands afterJamaica as a major producer of
sugar. And they tended to bemuch more closely connected with

(11:15):
Britain for a number of reasons.But one of the most fundamental
is that they were economicallydependent on Britain.

Jim Ambuske (11:23):
Like Thomas Pownall, the former governor of
Massachusetts Bay who envisionedthe British Empire as a kind of
imperial solar system withBritain at its heart, the lawyer
John Campbell argued that thesugar colonies were a key part
of an interdependent system oftrade designed to channel wealth
to the Mother Country:

John Campbell (11:42):
“As the inhabitants of the sugar
colonies, are continualpurchasers from such as are
settled upon the continent ofAmerica, the amount of their
purchases constitutes a balancefrom them in the favour of all
those who dispose of them. Buton the other hand, the
inhabitants of the northerncolonies, drawing large and
constant supplies of commoditiesand manufactures from hence, we

(12:05):
for the same reason have a likebalance in our favour against
them. It is evident thereforefrom this deduction, that by
transferring the balance due tothem, in satisfaction for that
which is due from them to us,the whole accumulated profits of
these transactions ultimatelycenter with the inhabitants of
Great Britain. Such are thecertain, the perpetual, the

(12:29):
prodigious benefits, that accrueto us from our Plantations.”

Jim Ambuske (12:34):
But building a “perpetual” empire in the
Caribbean was a capital andlabor intensive process. And
despite the serene observationsof colonists like Charles Leslie
and Maria Nugent, whitesettlers, enslaved people, and
free people of color had tocontend with often harsh
environments in the West Indies.The island of Antigua helps us

(12:56):
to understand why. Here’s MaryDraper:

Mary Draper (13:00):
Antigua in the 18th century is really at its prime.
You look at Antigua on a map, itlooks like an inkblot. There are
tons of tiny peninsulas thatpenetrate out into the Caribbean
Sea. And as a result, there aretons of really great harbors,
these harbors, ended upsheltering vessels that both

(13:21):
participated in trade. But also,Antigua would be one of the
first places that ships wouldstop and deliver news and the
18th century. And so Antiguabecame this very important note
for communication. And so it waspretty well integrated with the
Empire. It's part of a largercolony called the Leeward
Islands, and that referred tothe islands of Antigua, Barbuda,

(13:45):
Montserrat, St. Kitts, Nevis,and then what we were now called
the Virgin Islands. This regionwithin the northern part of the
Eastern Caribbean, would havebeen a region where people were
really used to inter Islandtravel. Beyond that, Antigua is
a particularly environmentallyvulnerable place. People that

(14:07):
lived in Antigua throughout the1700s in the 1800s would have
been very used to drought, andthey would have been very used
to hurricanes, and tiga was wellknown for being a drought prone
island. There is no freshwatersource and in tiga, there were a
series of years where they didnot receive adequate rainfall.

Jim Ambuske (14:30):
In the winter of 1774, Aa Scottish visitor named
Janet Shaw reflected onAntigua's freshwater problem as
she walked through fields ofsugarcane.

Janet Shaw (14:40):
“We walked thro’ many cane pieces, as they term
the fields of Sugar-canes, andsaw different ages of it. This
has been a remarkable fineseason, and every body is in
fine spirits with the prospectof the Crop of Sugar. You have
no doubt heard that Antigua hasno water, but what falls in
rain; A dry season thereforeproves destructive to the crops,

(15:02):
as the canes require moremoisture.”

Mary Draper (15:05):
People in Antigua had to figure out how to adapt
to that environment. So theythey created cisterns, they dug
wells. At one point in the early1700s. They actually created an
inter-island water trade tofacilitate the trade and fresh
water from nearby islands wherethere were freshwater sources.
So that, coupled with hurricanesmade it into a very, very

(15:30):
precarious place.

Jim Ambuske (15:32):
As Janet Shaw's jaunt through the sugar fields
suggests, Antiguans needed freshwater and lots of it for
themselves and for their crops.

Mary Draper (15:41):
In the 18th century, Antigua was a
plantation society, and it was aslave society. So it was a
Caribbean island where there wasan enslaved majority. And the
rhythms of everyday life wouldhave been absolutely dictated by
the plantation landscape by theplanting seasons. So people
would have been very attunedabout when to plant sugar, and
when to harvest that sugar. Thelandscape itself would have been

(16:05):
dotted with sugar mills, sugarmills are essentially windmills.
So if you were to visit Antigua,today, you would still see just
tons of dilapidated windmillsthat would harness the wind to
allow people to process sugarinto the commodity that people
would buy.

Jim Ambuske (16:23):
As important as Antigua was to the empire by the
early 1760s, it paled incomparison to the island of
Jamaica.

Brooke Newman (16:31):
Jamaica was of critical importance to the
British Empire in this period.It's the wealthiest colony, both
in terms of its total wealth,but also in regards to the
wealth of individual colonistswho have a stake on the island.
My name is Brooke Newman. I'm anassociate professor of history
at Virginia CommonwealthUniversity. It is exporting more

(16:52):
than half of all the sugar and85% of the ROM that's being
imported into Britain at thetime. And it's also one of the
world's top sugar producers,second only to the French island
of Santa Ming. And I think thisjust knowing these bare economic
facts, helps to in some ways,enable you to think about what
this place must have been likebecause this is a place that is

(17:13):
rooted in agriculturalproduction and sugar production
and mono cultural production.

Trevor Burnard (17:18):
It's a place of extremes. Jamaica is an
extraordinary place in themiddle of the 18th century. It
was a constant mind from whichperson derives its riches. That
was one explanation of it. Itwas the jewel in the British
crown. There's another one.Trevor Burnard,
Wilberforce,Professor of Slaveryand Emancipation. Wilberforce

(17:38):
Institute, University of Hull. Iwould think of very much as
quintessential Atlantic place.The traditional way we think of
the Atlantic is a movement ofpeople things and ideas. And
Jamaica fits into that very,very well. It's in the middle of
the Caribbean ocean. So it'sconnected very much to Atlantic
trade circuits. It gets itspopulation from various parts of

(18:00):
Africa, or from various parts ofBritain, Scotland, a little bit
of Irish, and certainly a lot ofEnglish people as well. So it's
a very heterogeneous sort ofplace. It's also highly
connected to North America. It'shugely connected with New
England and Wales, Pennsylvaniaand New York. Because one of the

(18:21):
mysteries that we alwayswondered is the growing
population of those areas boughthuge amounts of goods from
Britain. How did they pay forthem? Well, they paid from a
provision, say, sent to Jamaica,so Jamaica relied for its food
on New England and Pennsylvaniarelied on its people from well
developed linkages with Africa.But Jamaica is an

(18:42):
extraordinarily brutal place,extraordinary rich place, a very
modern place as well. It's aplace where the pursuit of money
the pursuit of short termadvantage is extreme, where
religion counts for very little.It's where people black but also
white people live in a veryloose relationships. Families

(19:03):
are always breaking up both dueto mortality, but also be due to
people moving on. It's a placeof flux. It's a place of
violence. It's a place ofwealth. It's a place of extremes
in all sorts of ways. So if youinclude Jamaica, as I think you
should, as part of America, it'svery much at the extreme.

Brooke Newman (19:23):
There are a couple of key cities Kingston
and Spanish Town, there is agrowing population of free
people of African and mixedancestry, and also people of
Jewish ancestry living in theseurban locations. But the bulk of
the population is scatteredaround the island, and it is

(19:44):
composed primarily of enslavedpeople working on these
plantations of various sizes. Sosome of them are massive
plantations and some of them aresmaller, but that is where the
bulk of the population is inJamaica.

Trevor Burnard (19:56):
Jamaica would rank as perhaps one of the most
inegalitarian place. It haswhites who ate like porpoises
and drank like cormorants. Ithas 10 to 15,000 white settlers,
some of whom are extraordinarilyrich, the rest of whom live
reasonably well and whocultivate by the middle of the
18th century, a very strongsense that whiteness is

(20:17):
everything. In other words, theylive very high have
extraordinary standards ofliving, extraordinary wealth,
these many of them ate, drankfornicated like crazy, it has
free people of color to occupyan ambivalent place in society.
On the other hand, you have themajority of the population
150,000 enslaved people wholived on the verge of

(20:38):
starvation, even on the best oftime, were mistreated, died in
large numbers, and wereincredibly resentful and were
African much more than otherplaces. So it's a place of
extreme.

Jim Ambuske (20:52):
The extreme nature of Jamaican society was by the
early 1760s a reflection of thechoices that Jamaicans and
British officials made since thecolony’s incorporation into the
empire a century earlier. In1655, when English soldiers and
sailors conquered SpanishJamaica, they did so at a
chaotic moment in Englishhistory. After nearly a decade

(21:17):
of civil war, the king was dead.England was a republic, and
Parliament reigned supreme. Bythis point, Barbados and Antigua
had been English colonies forover 20 years. And while
mainland colonies like Virginiastruggled to find their footing
and develop cash crops liketobacco, Barbados was already

(21:38):
the most prominent and wealthyEnglish colony in the Caribbean.
Enslaved people made up nearlyhalf of the island's population,
producing the sugar that wasrapidly becoming central to the
Empire's prosperity. ButBarbados was becoming
overcrowded, with too fewopportunities for newly arrived
white settlers and indenturedservants. In the same moment,

(22:01):
Parliament under the leadershipof Oliver Cromwell was keen to
disrupt Spanish dominance in theAmericas and establish a greater
English presence in theCaribbean. As part of a plan
called the Western Design,Parliament sent a fleet to
capture the island ofHispaniola. The fleet stopped
first in Barbados, where menfrom throughout the English

(22:24):
islands hoping to partake in thespoils of war join the
expedition, but disease wroughthavoc on the English force. And
in April 1655, the Spanishdefenders on Hispaniola repulsed
who would be conquerors whatremained of the English fleet
sailed to Jamaica, an island notinsignificant to the Spanish,

(22:46):
but one far less important tothem than Cuba or Hispaniola.
While enslaved indigenous andAfrican people's labor for
Spanish colonists on the island,Jamaica was more of a military
outpost than it was a plantationsociety. The English captured
the more weakly defended Jamaicain May, a consolation prize from

(23:07):
a failed expedition that wouldsoon pay enormous dividends. In
the years following theconquest, the English sought to
replicate their success inBarbados, in the new colony of
Jamaica, England sent indenturedservants, prisoners and other
free white colonists to Jamaica.In an effort to build up the

(23:27):
island's population. EnslavedAfricans were important to work
the growing number of sugarplantations, but the population
of both grew slowly kept incheck largely by disease. By
1661, however, the politicalwinds began to shift throughout
the empire, the English Republichad collapsed, Parliament

(23:49):
restored the monarchy andproclaimed Charles the second,
the son of the decapitated King,as the nation's rightful
sovereign. The Return of theKing have profound implications
for English, Jamaica, a colonystruggling to realize its grand
ambitions. Brooke Newmanexplains how:

Brooke Newman (24:08):
I was initially interested in primarily the
development of slave society, inJamaica, and ultimately, free
people who try to achieve equalrights with white subjects. But
I became fascinated by theconstitutional history of
Jamaica, and how slavery andsubject hood and ideas about
that and whiteness were allintertwined. And I think Jamaica

(24:30):
is a great case study because itwas a conquered colony. And
because it was conquered fromthe Spanish, the people who
lived on the island who migratedthere, they didn't have
according to various legalprinciples at the time, any kind
of inherent claim to the rightsof English subjects.

Jim Ambuske (24:49):
In that sense, Jamaica was very different from
contemporary mainland colonieslike Virginia or Massachusetts
Bay. They had been settled undercorporate charters granted by
the crown in the earlyseventeenth century. Those
charters conferred the sameEnglish rights on settlers and
their descendants as if they hadbeen born in England. That was
not the case for conqueredcolonies like Jamaica.

Brooke Newman (25:12):
But Charles the Second, as incoming King issued
a proclamation in 1661, in orderto attract settlers to this
island, and it says, quote, thatall children of any of our
natural born subjects of Englandto be born in Jamaica shall have
and I'm paraphrasing a littlebit here at the same privileges
as our freeborn subjects ofEngland. This was regarded as

(25:35):
the foundational Charter, whichguaranteed the inherited rights
of English subjects to Jamaicancolonists and their children.
And I think it's worthexplaining for a minute, you
know, what were these rightsthat they believe that they had,
and that were so critical tobeing English and ultimately
British. First, it was the rightto representative government,

(25:55):
and the power to legislate overlocal affairs, the right to due
process and trial by jury, theright to vote and hold office
subject to religious andproperty qualifications. And
then the right and this wassomething they were very keen
upon the right to buy, inheritand bequeath property, in land,
in livestock, in slaves in allsorts of different things. And

(26:19):
these rights were rights thatthey held very dear, but also
which they believed. And thenI'm talking specifically about
white Jamaicans and particularlycolonial authorities in Jamaica,
that having these rights, gavethem the same voice or should,
as people who were born in whatthey would call the mother
country and raise their andliving there. And it was a way

(26:42):
of essentially identifying asEnglish and claiming the rights
of subject hood, in a placewhere they were a minority of
the population, and where theminority was getting smaller and
smaller, over the decades.

Jim Ambuske (26:56):
As the minority white population continued to
shrink relative to a growingenslaved population, the
boundaries of subject hoodbecame somewhat clearer.

Brooke Newman (27:06):
At the same time as they are in this island and
trying to claim Englishsubjecthood, it's becoming
increasingly associated withwhiteness, because the whiteness
is the key to having all ofthese rights. None of these
rights apply to enslaved people.And none of these rights apply
to people who are notProtestant, who are not fitting

(27:30):
the characteristics of what asubject should be a natural born
subject. So they start to definepeople who are outside of the
parameters, people who areAfrican descent, people who are
Jewish, free blacks, and alsoCatholics in the beginning
Quakers, they want to preventthe majority of the population

(27:51):
from having rights and fromclaiming this subject hood that
they hold to be incrediblyprecious. But they also see it
as a protection of both theirpersonal rights but also their
property rights.

Jim Ambuske (28:05):
The king’s proclamation led to the creation
of a legislative assembly andthe development of a political
society that in many waysmirrored the mainland colonies.
And with English rights andliberties guaranteed to certain
kinds of white settlers andtheir property, increasing
numbers of migrants from Britainand Ireland sought out new
opportunities in Jamaica. And asMary Draper explains, few things

(28:29):
attracted aspiring whiteplanters, merchants, and
overseers to the British WestIndies more than:

Mary Draper (28:35):
The prospect of incredible wealth. If you were
to take the wealthiest people inall of British America, most of
them would have lived in theCaribbean or been absentee
planters with ties to theCaribbean. Someone had migrated
from Great Britain tocontinental North America, they
could make a decent livingworking as a merchant or working
as an overseer enter a tobaccoplantation or on a rice

(28:57):
plantation. But the wealth thatthey could attain from those
professions was nothing comparedto the wealthy might possibly be
able to attain from migrating tothe Caribbean and working in the
realm of sugar. So mostoverseers were the second signs
the other family members ofwealthier families in the

(29:18):
Atlantic world who wanted to seeif they could improve their lot
in life. They would migrateplaces and oftentimes they are
men on the makes that wanted tosee if they could ascend the
socio economic ladder. And soworking as an overseer on a
sugar plantation in the eyes ofmany would have been one way to
maybe use whatever profits aperson made, and launch a sugar

(29:42):
plantation right acquire land.

Jim Ambuske (29:44):
On some islands, wealth and the transient nature
of white society gave rise to aclass of absentee planters who
forged crucial links with GreatBritain. Wealth from the West
Indies enabled such planters tobuy extensive property and fund
significant business ventures inplaces like London, Glasgow, and
the Scottish Highlands. Here’sAndrew O’Shaughnessy:

Andrew O'Shaughnessy (30:07):
You have quite high absenteeism,
especially in the LeewardIslands in St. Kitts. A lot of
the major estates were owned bypeople that lived in England.
Part of it was they just made somuch money, they could actually
afford to go and live in stylein England. And you see a
similar development in SouthCarolina from the 1750s. There's

(30:30):
a lot of similarityincidentally, between South
Carolina and the islands, thatsort of culture and mentality
the period not least becauseSouth Carolina was originally
set up by Barbadians people fromthe island of Barbados, that the
islands did not develop schoolsor colleges, unlike the Spanish

(30:52):
islands, and even the French tobe educated really either to get
a British tutor to theplantation, or to actually go to
England. And one of the things Idid was a chart showing just the
proportion of people in theassembly something like antique
and more than half the peoplecan be positively identified.
And given that these lists ofvarying complete one suspects,

(31:15):
the proportion was actuallyhigher. A lots of them had been
to places like Oxford andCambridge schools like Eton. And
that was due to their fabulouswealth.

Jim Ambuske (31:27):
Absenteeism and frequent white migration can
make it difficult to imagine acolony like Jamaica as a settler
society. But as Trevor Burnardargues, we should see it as one.

Trevor Burnard (31:39):
I would call it a settler society. It's just a
different type of settlersociety. We don't have to have
New England as the model ofsettler societies, even if many
of them don't survive, even ifthe leading elite usually at
only two or three generations inthere. It doesn't have as much
absenteeism as people think. Butit does have people moving back
to Britain, people who go there,from Britain, many of them are

(32:01):
Scots from Lowland areas, manyof them come from the south
east, often from London, thosesorts of areas as well, they
tend to be a little bit ofhigher social status than some
of the people going to NorthAmerica. But they're people on
the main, they're willing totake risks. And they go there
for a couple of reasons. They gothere, I think, to make money,

(32:21):
but they also go there for achance of a certain type of
freedom. They don't need todrink, they don't need to
fornicator going there to makemoney. They're going there to
have fun. They see themselves asan extraordinary hospitable
people. But it's not foreverybody.

Jim Ambuske (32:35):
The exponential growth of sugar production in
eighteenth-century Jamaicaoffers us some insight into the
growing consumer demand for thesugar, molasses, and rum, the
labor required to produce it,and the wealth it could create.
In 1739, there were 419 estateson the island. By the mid-1770s,

(32:57):
that number had grown to 775estates as the British brought
more land under cultivation.Over roughly the same period of
time, sugar output in Jamaicaincreased from 10,000 tons to
50,000 tons. What did this meanin terms of wealth?

Trevor Burnard (33:16):
We're talking very large wealth. The
wealthiest people in Jamaica,the Great Transatlantic
merchants like Thomas Hibbert,the greatest slave trade of the
period, people like SimonTaylor, a great planter. They
have wealth, which would putthem in the range of the senior
aristocratic in Britain, or thewealthiest merchants. To put it
into context and 1774. Therichest man in British America

(33:39):
dies with an inventory of£36,000 pounds. That's Peter
Manigault, South Carolina. Thewealthiest person in Jamaica
dying in that year has an estateof about five times as much. At
the very top levels, you'relooking at people around 700 to
1000 enslaved people, wealth of£200,000. And the average white

(34:02):
was also pretty well off aswell. He Thomas, this will came
from nothing, lived in Jamaicafor quite a long time died worth
about £3000 pounds, thatwouldn't put him anywhere near
the top ranks of Jamaicanwealth. That means that he would
be pretty wealthy by New Englandstandards. We think of it as
sugar plantations, but it hasthe fourth largest town and

(34:22):
British America and easily thewealthiest town, it would be
several times wealthier thanBoston, probably Boston, New
York and Philadelphia combined,wouldn't reach the wealth that
Kingston had. So the averagewealth of a white Jamaican is
probably about £1500 pounds. Theaverage wealth of a New
Englander is about £48 pounds,you know, that sort of says
something about the differencesand of course, the wealth is

(34:44):
very much concentrated at thetop in.

Jim Ambuske (34:51):
Simon Taylor was the beneficiary of the rights,
liberties, and wealth that theBritish were building in
Jamaica. Taylor was born inKingston in 1739 to Martha, the
daughter of a wealthy planter,and Patrick, an emigrant Scot.
When Patrick died in 1754, hisfirst-born son inherited an

(35:12):
estate valued at £50,000, nearly1,000 acres of land in the
Parish of St.Thomas-in-the-east, and numerous
enslaved people. Over the next30 years, Simon built a
transatlantic sugar empire thatspanned three plantations, a
merchant business, otherproperties, and hundreds of
enslaved laborers Here's BrookeNewman:

Brooke Newman (35:34):
The economic success of Jamaica came at this
really brutal price. This was tosome extent, a cosmopolitan
place with many different peopledifferent languages, but at the
same time, a place that was 90%enslaved that was majority black
that had a very small minorityof white settlers who were

(35:58):
exercising control over thisvery large enslaved population.

Mary Draper (36:03):
Sugar plantations are known to be very deadly
sites of slavery. Of all of theplantations in the Atlantic
world and you have plantationsthat produce cotton, you have
plantations that produce rice,the plantations that produce
sugar, were the plantations withthe deadliest conditions for
enslaved people.

Trevor Burnard (36:23):
Ver few people ever grow up thinking I like to
be sugar worker. And there's areason for that is that it's
just very difficult. You have acombination of very hard
physical labor, great dangerwith sharp knives with boiling
houses, and the necessity to dothings at speed. At the same
time, you have to work in sugarsin gangs, so you don't have much

(36:46):
individual incentive. And you'reworking in the middle of the sun
as well. And British people hada myth, Americans do as well,
that somehow rather Africans aresuited to hot weather. They
don't mind working in very hotweather doing very hard for
work, all the demographicevidences against that, which is
that it was just a terriblyonerous form of work. And most

(37:09):
classes, whether they be theindividual planters or the
overseers that they use tocontrol slaves, but mostly
concerned about getting as big aharvest as quickly as they can.
And so slave welfare was veryfar down the list. If you wanted
to choose what you wanted to doin the 18th century, being a
sugar worker on a Jamaican thestate would be bad as bad a job

(37:31):
as you could get.

Jim Ambuske (37:33):
Enslaved people throughout the Atlantic world
enjoyed no rights, no legalcontrol over their own bodies,
nor over those of theirfamilies, and lived with the
fear of being sold at anymoment. In these respects, there
was no difference between thelives of enslaved people on the
mainland and those in theCaribbean. The vicious nature of

(37:54):
sugar work and the Caribbeanenvironment, however, resulted
in some key distinctions betweenplantation societies in British
America. By the mid-eighteenthcentury, in the comparatively
healthier environments oftobacco-growing Maryland and
Virginia and rice-producingSouth Carolina, local enslaved
populations were reproducing atrates that reduced those

(38:16):
colonies’ reliance on thetransatlantic slave trade. The
same could not be said for thesugar growing colonies in the
Caribbean.

Trevor Burnard (38:24):
Jamaica relied on the transatlantic slave
trade. They didn't say this, butthis is what they thought there
was a very crude idea that youbuy rather than breed. They were
not interested in havingchildren. They were just a
nuisance and they die anyway,women were used as a frontline
and making sugar, destroyingtheir health, all those sort of

(38:45):
things, which means that four to5%, perhaps in the 17th century
3% in the 18th century, ofenslaved people died every year,
and sometimes more than that,say always needed the slave
trade. When it comes to the1760s. I think something which
is often not considered is thatVirginia and South Carolina had

(39:06):
freedom of action in termsrelation to person. Places like
Jamaica did not do because theydidn't require the slave trade
in order to maintain theplantation system.

Jim Ambuske (39:17):
Population numbers reveal the scale of Jamaica’s
deadly connection to thetransatlantic slave trade. In
1746, the island’s enslavedpopulation was about 130,000
people. By 1805, that number hadgrown to 325,000. But over that

(39:37):
same period of time, more than610,000 enslaved people were
imported into the colony. Themajority of the enslaved people
came from West Africa, includingthe Bight of Biafra, the Gold
Coast in what is now Ghana, andthe Bight of Benin, in the Gulf
of Guiana. The British referredto the peoples who came from the

(39:58):
Gold Coast as “Coromantees,” adesignation that obscures the
many peoples and the manylanguages they spoke, but one
that the British would associatewith their military prowess both
in West Africa and Jamaica.Jamaican planters relied heavily
on British merchants on bothsides of the Atlantic to feed

(40:19):
their continued need forenslaved people. Rhode Island
merchants were among the mostprominent. Abby Chandler, an
Associate Professor of Historyat the University of
Massachusetts-Lowell. Notes how:

Abby Chandler (40:31):
Rhode Island is a colony that is deeply tied to
the British slave trade. RhodeIsland is a very maritime
oriented colony. There, rightthere on Narragansett Island.
You have a number of RhodeIsland sea captains who become

(40:53):
involved with the transport ofenslaved Africans across the
Atlantic Ocean. But you alsohave Rhode Island merchants who
are involved in the transport,but who also own sugar
plantations in the Caribbeantransporting enslaved Africans
across the ocean using theirlabor to grow sugar, which is

(41:16):
then getting transported inthose same ships up to Rhode
Island where it's made into rum,which is then traded for
enslaved people. And so thatcycle goes around and around and
around.

Jim Ambuske (41:28):
British American merchants supply the Caribbean
colonies and their enslavedpopulations in two critical
ways. On the one hand, theintensive investment in sugar
production, and the desire tobring every available acre under
cultivation meant that islandershad a great need for North
American provisions.

Andrew O'Shaughnessy (41:46):
The islands really depended a lot on
North American food andsupplies. Some of these smaller
islands like St. Kitts usedevery square acre of ground to
grow sugar if they could, andgrew very few provisions.

Mary Draper (42:03):
They would have traded for foodstuffs,
especially salted cod, theywould have also traded for
lumber because oftentimesCaribbean islands were not
necessarily completely denuded,but significantly denuded of
tree cover because those treeswere used to fuel the fire to
process sugar cane.

Andrew O'Shaughnessy (42:21):
Even some of the housing. I was amazed to
discover that they had theequivalent of prefab houses
ready made constructed kits thatcould be imported from America
during the colonial period tothe islands, so they're
dependent on America in someways.

Jim Ambuske (42:41):
British American merchant ships also transported
enslaved people directly fromWest Africa to the Caribbean. In
Rhode Island, merchants likeblame and Samuel Vernon
sponsored slaving voyages, asdid Nicholas Brown and Company
of Providence. A 1764 slavingvoyage outfitted by Brown and

(43:02):
Company reveals how this tradewas supposed to work, and what
could go wrong? When Brown andCompany organized the voyage of
the ship Sally, it had been fiveyears since the firm last
sponsored an expedition to WestAfrica. In 1764. However, a
postwar depression plagued theAtlantic economy. In need of

(43:24):
capital. Nicholas Brown and hisbrothers believed that a slaving
voyage was a good option toimprove the company's fortunes,
and the market for enslavedpeople in the Caribbean, remain
strong. In September, the Sallydeparted Rhode Island for Africa
under the command of EsexHopkins, the ship's inventory

(43:45):
list the variety of items thatHopkins and his crew would use
to purchase a cargo of enslavedpeople. Among them 1800 bunches
of onions, 30 boxes of whale oilcandles, 40 barrels of beef and
pork, and over 17,000 gallons ofNew England made rum. The Sally
arrived on the African coast twomonths later, only to find

(44:08):
sizable competition from othermerchant vessels, including many
from Rhode Island. Hopkinspurchased an African boy and
girl from another slave ship fora barrel of flour, and 156
gallons of rum. In December, theSally anchored off a small
island in the Gambia River. Theisland sits in the middle of the

(44:29):
river 15 or so miles from hismouth, in what is now the West
African nation of Gambia. TheirHopkins purchased another 13
enslaved people from thegovernor of the British fort for
1200 gallons of rum and othersupplies. competition from other
merchants complicated hisability to purchase a full cargo

(44:50):
of enslaved people. The voyagewas not going as he or his
employers had hoped. The salaryremained off the African hosed
for nine months, taking onenslaved people keeping them
captive aboard ship beforedeparting for the Caribbean in
August 20, 1765. By then,Hopkins had purchased 196

(45:13):
Africans, but the ship left withonly 155 aboard. 19 had already
died aboard the ship. Hopkinsleft another woman near death
behind, and he sold 21 to othertraders. Eight days later, on
August 28, someone would havevery brief entry in the ship's

(45:36):
account book, slaves

Esek Hopkins (45:37):
"Slaves Rose on us was obliged fire on them and
Destroyed 8"

Jim Ambuske (45:43):
Hopkins and his crew suppressed the
insurrection, killing eightAfricans to more died from their
wounds. In the wake of thefailed uprising. Hopkins later
reported that some of thesurviving Africans lost all
hope.

Unknown (46:00):
"Some Drowned them Selves Some Starved and Others
Sickened & Dyed."

Jim Ambuske (46:06):
By the time the Sally arrived in Antigua seven
weeks later, 68 captive Africanshad died on the voyage. Another
20 perished after the ship putinto port on November 16. The
weaked survivors were auctionedoff at very low prices. For

(46:27):
Nicholas Brown and Company, thevoyage of the Sally was a
financial failure. Most but notall of the Brown Brothers chose
not to sponsor another slavetrading expedition to West
Africa. But they continue toinvest in the production of rum
and the provision trade to theCaribbean. Get the tragedy of
the Sally points to somethingthat ship captains and

(46:49):
plantation masters feared wasever present the possibility of
slave insurrections and in theWest Indies were enslaved people
vastly outnumbered whitesettlers. British colonists
sought ways to control theircaptive populations to prevent
the next uprising. This includeda significant reliance on

(47:09):
British troops. AndrewO’Shaughnessy explains:

Andrew O'Shaughnessy (47:12):
One of the consequences that in some cases
90% of the population beingblack in some of these islands.
That the whites really weren'tquite fearful of rebellion from
the 1730s. Both Jamaica andAntigua started paying almost
the equivalent of doubling thesalary of the troops in the

(47:37):
islands, they pay a subsidy tohave the troops there. And in
Antigua, it's a result of aslave conspiracy in 1736 still
debated how much truth there wasturd but it was very real to
people at the time. And inJamaica, it was due to a maroon
war. These were runaway slaveshad gone to the interior of the

(48:01):
island and most mountainousparts and had become separate
societies. In the 1730s, theBritish fought the war against
Moroons but they did notcompletely wind it. It was a
truce.

Jim Ambuske (48:14):
The Maroons who waged war against the British in
Jamaica were the descendants ofenslaved people who had fled
into the islands mountainousinterior decades earlier. More
recently escaped enslaved peoplefound refuge in the maroon
communities as well. In responseto maroon raids on British
plantations, British troopsbegan attacking Maroon
settlements in hopes ofdestroying them and establishing

(48:36):
control over the islandsinterior. The Maroons offered
fierce resistance over thecourse of the 1730s. The Maroons
and their British enemies foughta protracted war that ended in a
stalemate. In 1739, the Britishsigned treaties with the Maroons
that recognize their autonomy inthe interior in exchange for

(48:58):
their independence. The Maroonsagreed to assist the British in
capturing escaped slaves andjoined with British forces to
repel foreign invasions. The endof the Maroon war ushered in an
era of relative stability inJamaica. It didn't last.

Trevor Burnard (49:15):
1760 out of nowhere, a slave revolt occurs
in several parts of Jamaica allat the same time.

Jim Ambuske (49:24):
When Tacky’s Revolt erupted on April 7, 1760, it did
so at the same moment thatBritish troops were battling
Cherokee warriors in theCarolina backcountry, and
fighting European forces acrossthe Atlantic. The revolt is
mostly commonly known as Tacky’sRevolt. It involved enslaved
people in St. Mary’s Parish inthe east and Westmoreland Parish

(49:46):
in the west. Coromantees wereamong them.

Trevor Burnard (49:50):
It's called Tacky’s Revolt. He was
lieutenant rather than the majorperson the major person has this
extraordinary site called Wageror Apongo, who was rumored to
have been a prince in Guinea anda military leader. He conducts
this in slave revolt withseveral plantations raised up at
the same time. It's anextraordinarily dangerous moment

(50:10):
for Jamaica.

Brooke Newman (50:12):
Tacky’s Revolt occur strategically during the
Seven Years War, becauseenslaved people are very savvy.
They recognize that there areall these disruptions going on
and they tend to pay attentionto the movement of ships to
different ports. They know whenthe island is particularly

(50:35):
vulnerable. The massiverebellion that occurred in 1760,
which lasted about a yearinvolved around 1500 enslaved
people, over 500 of them diedand over 60 whites and this at
the time was the most violentslave revolt to occur in either
the French or the BritishCaribbean before the Haitian
Revolution.

Jim Ambuske (50:55):
Apongo who led the revolt in western Jamaica, had
been a military leader in WestAfrica before he was captured
and enslaved in the 1740s. Hebecame the property of Captain
Arthur Forrest, who gave Apongothe English name "Wager," after
his ship, the HMS Wager. Forrestowned a plantation in

(51:15):
Westmoreland Parish.

Trevor Burnard (51:18):
Wager wants to as far as we know, to create an
African kingdom in the NewWorld, and it gets very close to
succeeding. He doesn't kill thatmany white people but he
destroys lots of plantations andtook maximum force and maximum
luck by that man from Jamaicanto put it down.

Jim Ambuske (51:37):
Tacky, who led the rebellion in St. Mary's Parish,
was killed within days of theuprising. Apongo was captured in
July. He was hung in chainswhile awaiting execution, but he
died before it could be carriedout. Despite their deaths, the
revolt continued until October1761. By then, a combination of

(52:00):
British Regulars Jamaicanmilitia, and Maroon forces
finally managed to suppress it.Takis revolt had far reaching
repercussions for Jamaica'senslaved population.

Trevor Burnard (52:12):
The people putting down the revolt were
mostly concerned with showing anexample to other slaves by
killing enslaved people asgrisly a fashion as they could.
The Jamaicans tightened up theirslave system, they made security
important they brought Britishtroops over, they gave support
to slave owners.

Jim Ambuske (52:32):
White Jamaicans had always used fear as a means to
control their enslaved people.After Tacky's Revolt, slavery in
Jamaica became even moreoppressive. White settlers used
fear to great effect.

Trevor Burnard (52:46):
They use fear as a weapon. They create fear among
their enslaved people by actingarbitrarily, which is not to say
that they didn't get terrifiedthemselves, the ratio of whites
to blacks was one to 10 andrural areas could be one to 15.
Many of these enslaved peoplehad military experience, many of
them were armed. If it didn'thave guns, they had machetes if

(53:09):
it didn't have those they hadfire, which could burn down the
thing. So they lived in a stateof war. So you can see that in
their houses, and you see lotsof plantation houses at least
before the 1760s or so, whichlooked like castles, and armed
against their enslaved people.But I would emphasize very much
that these are people who werenaturally afraid. I mean, if you

(53:30):
are a fearful person, you didn'tgo to Jamaica, just look at the
portraits they have. They gottheir hands on their hips, in a
typical sort of male thrustingout aggressive sort of style,
their confidence and theirability to command themselves,
command other people's they useviolence against themselves.
They're prepared to be violent,and to use violence, because

(53:51):
they know that violence might beused against them, and so they
create a workforce which isterrified of what might happen
to them. If you're a woman,you're terrified not only a
physical violence but of sexualcoercion. If you're a man,
you're likely to get whipped fora little bit of an infraction.
And if you engage in such thingsas rebellion, they'll kill you

(54:12):
and your family in the mostgrotesque ways.

Jim Ambuske (54:16):
For white Jamaicans, the revolt also led
to a greater reckoning of whatdefined whiteness itself, and
all that rights and libertiesthat came with claims to that
racial status. Since the Englishconquest of Jamaica the previous
century, whiteness in Jamaicahad been the subject of constant
debate and negotiation inJamaica society and in the

(54:37):
colonial assembly.

Brooke Newman (54:38):
The reason they eventually set up this really
interesting system where they'redefining and then redefining who
is white and who is not. And whowas eligible for the rights of
English subjects and who was noton the basis of hereditary
descent is because there is asmall but increasingly vocal
population of for Many peoplehave mixed ancestry, who have

(55:03):
fathers who are white, and whoare either English or Scottish
primarily. And they have decidedto leave certain property to
their offspring, even thoughtheir offspring are illicit and
illegitimate. And even though inmany cases, they're enslaved,
and so they will sometimes freetheir offspring, and then give

(55:23):
them property, give them land,and sometimes even slaves, or
we'll send them back to Britainto be educated. And there is
simply record where they discussthis, they actually sit down in
multiple situations. And theytalk about essentially, the
drawbacks, and the benefits ofprivileging because that's how
they see it, privileging theillicit offspring of these

(55:45):
illicit, and or coerce sexualrelationships between white men,
and enslaved women. And ofcourse, it's never the reverse.
It's never white women andenslaved men, the progeny from
those relationships, obviously,are off the table in this
imagined world where they aredeciding who is white and who is
not. And essentially making upracial categories as they go.

(56:10):
They'll have conversations wherethey'll say, Well, if x number
of generations pass, thensomeone can be declared legally
white. And then we'll just sortof fold them in to the planter
elite, and they'll be on ourside. And that helps bolster the
dwindling white populationagainst the enslaved population.
But let's say they're notlegally white yet. And they

(56:31):
haven't gone through thislaundering system of multiple
generations. But they are close,and they have connections to the
white elite establishment andthey have wealth and they have
money, then they can petitionfor a private bill to be passed
in their favor, and then bedeclared legally white. And so
they set up a system. In short,that gives them complete control

(56:56):
over race, and racialcategories, and the rights and
privileges associated with thoseracial categories. What it
really indicates, is substantialcontrol on the part of colonial
authorities to decide who isdeserving and who isn't. have
titles, property, land, wealth,and all of the trappings of

(57:22):
whiteness, the ability to vote,the ability to hold property and
not have it subject to any kindof qualifications, the ability
to run for office, this is notsomething that even if you were
a free black of substance thatyou could ever hope to achieve.
If you didn't have connections,blood connections to members of

(57:43):
the white elite.

Jim Ambuske (57:45):
The shock of Tacky's Revolt injected a
renewed sense of urgency intothese debates.

Brooke Newman (57:50):
The assembly immediately became convinced
that mixed race people inparticular had too much wealth,
and would attain political powerunless they were subject to some
kind of restriction, and that ifthey ever attained political
power, they would side withslaves. And this would lead to a

(58:10):
collapse of the slave system,and most importantly, at the
time would drive away potentialwhite settlers. So they see a
connection between revolution onthe part of enslaved people and
the growing community of freepeople of color who are
acquiring property who aretrying to push for equal rights

(58:30):
with white subjects and they seeit all as connected and not as
separate. And so they pass anact to prevent descendants of
slaves from inheritingbequeathing, or purchasing
property in excess of £2000pounds. The goal of this act is
that people who are descendedfrom slaves can only have
certain amount of property, andthey can only inherit a certain

(58:52):
mount of property and if they'regoing to have more than that
they have to petition theAssembly for approval. So after
Tacky's Revolt, it is muchharder for someone of African
and mixed descent to acquireland, to bequeath land to
someone else or any other kindof property to inherit property

(59:12):
without subject to any kind ofqualifications, or to have any
life that is independent ofcontrol from the Jamaican
authorities. They need to knowwhere people are at. They want
them to register. They want toknow where they live, who they
live with. The tax records atthe time also revealed that they
kept track of people's race.

Jim Ambuske (59:32):
Tacky's Revolt was a massive shock to white
Jamaicans' sense of place in theEmpire. It made their dependence
on the transatlantic slave tradeall the more evident as it did
the vulnerabilities of living ina slave society and the threat
presented to their lucrativesugar plantations. In London,

(59:53):
George the Third's ministerswere also all too aware of
sugar's importance to the Empireand how to disruptions to the
trade could undermine the commonImperial good. A powerful West
Indian lobby, including colonialagents, London merchants,
absentee planters living inBritain, and members of
parliament with interest in theCaribbean reminded the

(01:00:14):
government of that fact withfrequent regularity. And in
1763, the government now led byPrime Minister George Granville,
envisioned sugar as a key meansof solving two very difficult
Imperial puzzles. As the SevenYears War drew to a close, the
British government began toconfront a massive national debt

(01:00:38):
in excess of £130 millionpounds. Much of that money had
been borrowed to win the war.The interest on the debt alone
consumed unsustainable levels ofwhat revenue flowed into the
treasury from customs duties,excise taxes, and other sources.
Grenville's predecessor, LordBute, had supported an excise

(01:00:59):
tax on domestic ciderproduction. But the unpopularity
of that tax and the protestsagainst it helped to drive Bute
from office. The expansion ofthe empire itself placed burdens
on the Treasury to enforce theProclamation Line and keep the
peace in the North Americanbackcountry. The government
station 10,000 British troops inthe mainland colonies. That

(01:01:22):
directive appeared wise giventhe outbreak of Pontiac's War in
May 1763. Yet it would cost afurther £250,000 pounds per year
to sustain this army. Grenvilleand other British officials like
Charles Townsend and the Earl ofHalifax, believe that Parliament
ought to take a more direct rolein governing and regulating

(01:01:43):
British America. In their view,the colonists themselves ought
to bear some of the financialburden of administering and
defending an empire from whichthey derived so much benefit.
The impending expiration of a 30year old law in 1763, opened a
remarkably convenient window ofopportunity. In 1733, Parliament

(01:02:08):
passed the molasses act, JohnKukla, a historian of early
America explains the act'sintent:

Jon Kukla (01:02:14):
The original act of 1733 had imposed a six pence per
pound tax on sugar coming fromFrench sugar Islands, which was
a high enough tax that itbasically made the cost of
French sugar so expensive toprotect the British sugar
manufacturers in the Caribbean,and keep the French out of it.

Jim Ambuske (01:02:37):
Although Jamaica was the most productive of the
British sugar islands, theFrench colony of Saint Domangue
was even more so. Here’s AndrewO’Shaughnessy:

Andrew O'Shaughnessy (01:02:46):
French could undersell the British,
even in refined sugar by above15%, and sometimes higher.

Jon Kukla (01:02:55):
Now the trouble is, when you've got that much of a
transparency, it was easy forsmugglers to bribe somebody for
a penny or two A pound of sugar,evade the legal tax, and then
smuggle this stuff to NewEngland.

Andrew O'Shaughnessy (01:03:14):
And that meant that the planters and
merchants in the BritishCaribbean were really keen on
these acts which protected themfrom external competition.

Jim Ambuske (01:03:25):
Primce Minister Grenville believed that a new
Sugar Act, one which imposed alower duty on sugar, and
provided for more robustenforcement would bring in much
needed revenue to defray thecosts of empire, reduce
smuggling and protect Britain'slucrative sugar industry.

Jon Kukla (01:03:41):
Everybody who looked very closely at the workings of
the Act, as they wereconsidering its renewal in the
early 70s 60s, recognized thatthe ideal level of taxation
would be two pence per poundbecause at that point, it's
easier for a merchant to pay thetax than it is to risk having

(01:04:05):
his ship and commoditiescaptured in the act of
smuggling. Well, Parliamentwasn't quite ready to go that
far, in part because the Britishsugar islands had quite a strong
lobby and a number of members ofparliament. They settled on
three pence a pound rather thantwo pence a pound. And as a
result, there was some smugglingthat continued, but it was a

(01:04:28):
step in the right direction.

Jim Ambuske (01:04:30):
The new Sugar Act of 1764 received Royal Assent in
April. Some minor protests brokeout in British America over the
new law, most especially in theNew England colonies. The Act
put merchants in an awkwardposition. They feared that its
lower duty on sugar and itsstricter enforcement would
compel them to pay higher pricesfor British sugar than what they

(01:04:51):
might otherwise get by smugglingFrench sugar. Rhode Island
merchants wrote a remonstranceagainst the Sugar Act, claiming
that it would harm the coloniesprovisioning trade to the West
Indies in the slave trade toWest Africa.

Rhode Island Merchants (01:05:04):
“[W]ithout this trade, it would have been
and will always be, utterlyimpossible for the inhabitants
of this colony to subsistthemselves, or to pay for any
considerable quantity of Britishgoods.”

Jim Ambuske (01:05:17):
Stephen Hopkins, the colony’s governor, delivered
the remonstrance to Londonhimself. The governor was the
brother of Esek Hopkins, captainof the slave ship Sally. In
Boston, a failed businessman andtax collector named Samuel Adams
offered a far more ominouswarning.

Samuel Adams (01:05:36):
For if our Trade may be taxed why not our Lands?
Why not the Produce of our Lands& every thing we possess or make
use of? This we apprehendannihilates our Charter Right to
govern & tax ourselves – Itstrikes our British Privileges,
which as we have never forfeitedthem, we hold in common with our

(01:05:57):
Fellow Subjects who are Nativesof Britain: If Taxes are laid
upon us in any shape without ourhaving a legal Representation
where they are laid, are we notreduced from the Character of
free Subjects to the miserableState of tributary Slaves?

Andrew O'Shaughnessy (01:06:13):
This was regarded as a victory for the
British Caribbean, but it wouldbe regarded as the beginning of
the end in America.

Jim Ambuske (01:06:30):
On August 11 1764, the Earl of Halifax sat down at
his desk in St. James Palace inLondon to compose a letter,
copies of which would be sent toall the governors of His
Majesty's colonies in BritishAmerica. As Secretary of State
for the southern department,Halifax had oversight of the
colonies and manage them incollaboration with the Board of

(01:06:52):
Trade. From time to time, hewrote letters to the governor's
requesting information, we'readvising them of recent
developments in Parliament andthe Empire. On this day, in a
very short letter, Halifax didboth. With the Sugar Act about
to take effect, Halifax reportedthat the House of Commons had

(01:07:15):
determined that with a need todefray “the necessary expenses
of defending, protecting andsecuring the British Colonies &
Plantations in America, it maybe proper to charge certain
stamp duties in the saidColonies and Plantations.” The
governors were commanded byHalifax to “transmit to me,
without delay, a list of allinstruments made use of in

(01:07:38):
public transactions, lawproceedings, Grants,
conveyances, securities of Landor money within your
Governt[s].” The informationsupplied by the governors would
be useful should indeedParliament decide to levy a new
stamp tax on the colonies.British Americans would learn of
parliament's decision soonenough.

(01:08:05):
Thanks for listening to WorldsTurned Upside Down. Worlds is a
prodfuction of R2 Studios, partof the Roy Rosenzweig Center for
History and New Media at GeorgeMason University. I'm your
host, Jim Ambuske. This episodeof Worlds was made possible with
the support of the John CarterBrown Library, an independent

(01:08:25):
research library located on thecampus of Brown University. Head
to R2 studios.org for a completetranscript of today's episode,
and suggestions for furtherreading. Worlds is researched
and written by me withadditional research writing and
script editing by JeanettePatrick, Jeanette Patrick and I
are the executive producers.Grace Mallon is our British

(01:08:48):
correspondent. Our lead audioeditor is Curt Dahl of CD
squared. Amber Pelham andAlexander Miller are our
graduate assistants. Our thanksto Trevor Burnard, Abby
Chandler, Mary Draper, JohnKukla, Andrew O'Shaughnessy, and
Brooke Newman for sharing theirexpertise with us in this
episode. Thanks also to ourvoice actors Anne Fertig, Norman

(01:09:10):
Roger, Dan Howlett, NateSleater, and Beau Robbins.
Subscribe to Worlds on yourfavorite podcast app. Thanks,
and we'll see you next time.