Caribbean sugar colonies drove the rise of Atlantic capitalism

Evidence

Sugar was the economic miracle of the eighteenth century. Originally from the Middle East, sugarcane had been cultivated on Spanish and Portuguese islands of the eastern Atlantic for centuries. The Spanish in Hispaniola and the Portuguese in Brazil pioneered cane cultivation in the Americas, and the French and English drew on their examples and on the knowledge and finances of the Dutch in establishing their plantation societies in the Caribbean. These colonies both depended on and drove the expansion of the emerging capitalist system of the Atlantic world. Starting in the seventeenth century a remarkable spiral of cause and effect transformed sugar from a luxury enjoyed by only the wealthiest Europeans to a necessity that was a central part of many Europeans’ diets. — Dubois, Laurent, Avengers of the New World_ The Story of…, 75

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to readings on the Atlantic economy and the origins of capitalism, and to sugar’s role in Europe’s consumer revolution. — connects to: Saint-Domingue alone led the Atlantic world in sugar and coffee; Madeira’s sugar plantations first institutionalized slave labor as capitalist commodity production; Ottoman expansion, sugar cultivation, and Genoese-Iberian alliance made slave labor central to capitalism — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 556 (+12 more)
• corroborated: 3 independent passages support this claim — Dubois, Laurent, Avengers of the New World_ The Story of…, 75

Broader Connections

• Slavery was a critical foundation for early capitalism #corroborates (0.80) — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 584
• Capitalist accumulation was built on colonial conquest and enslavement. #corroborates (0.75) — Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the…, 82
• Plantation slavery combined capitalist and non-capitalist modes in dominance #expands (0.60)
• Madeira’s sugar plantations first institutionalized slave labor as capitalist commodity production #expands (0.55)
• Ottoman expansion, sugar cultivation, and Genoese-Iberian alliance made slave labor central to capitalism #expands (0.50) — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 556
• Cuba’s sugar boom replaced Haiti using massive new slave imports #exemplifies (0.50)
• Medieval Mediterranean slavery foreshadowed Atlantic colonial slavery #expands (0.45)