Sugar’s brutal labor regime made Saint-Domingue’s massive enslaved majority revolt.

Evidence

In 1791, just seven hundred miles from U.S. shores, enslaved men and women in France’s most profitable colony, Saint-Domingue, unleashed a rebellion. The revolt should have surprised no one. Like many other colonies in the Americas, Saint-Domingue’s main cash crop was sugar. Planting, growing, and harvesting it required intense labor performed in sweltering heat under the constant pain of the lash. Processing sugar was equally grueling, often pushing enslaved people to exhaustion, injury, and dismemberment as they labored throughout the night to feed the cane stalks through the mills. More than half of the men and women imported into Saint-Domingue directly from the African continent died within a few years, and those who survived were typically subjected to harsh punishments and outright torture. Following a whipping, enslaved people in Saint-Domingue were often burned with an open flame, while others were subjected to burning wax, hot coals, or boiling cane juice; some were even buried alive. The conditions for rebellion were especially ripe on the island, since the enslaved people there—the largest enslaved population in the Caribbean—far outnumbered the white enslavers and colonizers. — Nikole Hannah-Jones et al., The 1619 Project, 363

Categorization

• CANDY: Portable, grisly fact: over half of enslaved Africans died within a few years, and punishments included burning wax and live burial. Great party/tweet material.