Welcome! 10/26/09

Today’s Pre-Class

How would you react if you found out that the shoes you are wearing were made by exploited poor people in a different country?

Describe in 3-5 lines.

Today’s Agenda

1.Pre-Class & Roll

2.Share Out

3.Sugar & Barbados

4.Final Thoughts

Today’s Objectives:1.To understand how slavery systems started out2.To understand the importance of the Caribbean slave system

So how would morality/ethics affect your

shopping decisions?

TURN AND TALK – 30 Seconds!SHARE OUT YOUR THOUGHTS!

British West Indies -- Caribbean Where are we?: Barbados, Bahamas, Belize, and

Jamaica

Why do we care?: The slave system formed here would become the basis for the slave system in the American South – how do we know this?

The “cash crop” was sugarcane Not quite “sweatshop shoes” – similar idea, demand for

this product (and the money made from it) created a necessity for labor (albeit immoral labor)

Because of the heavy work load of sugarcane, large numbers of slaves were imported between 1700-1750

Where are we?The Caribbean

The Atlantic Ocean Region

Sugar as the Spark!

A similar story to what we saw in Jamestown Struggling settlement finds

“the perfect crop”

The only problem is sugar is ridiculously difficult to process and must be done quickly!

*Mr. Walker draws!

Crop grinding out fluid boiling house curing house (molasses separated out) excess created into rum (extra cash)

Why Slaves? Barbados Originally Used:

Indentured Servants

British Convicts (prisoners)

Movement to Slaves Occurred because:

1.Numbers of Servants declined.

2.Racial Solidarity – The job is too harsh and beneath “the white man”

3.Job was tough, and dangerous!

The Slave Population By 1700, enslaved Africans outnumbered Europeans in most

of the Caribbean (including Barbados)

Why was this? Constant flow of new slaves (cheap labor) Slaves were dying faster than they could reproduce Ex: Between 1640, 130,000 shipped in to Barbados

1700, 50,000 slaves remained

Why did they die?

1.Worked to death – (brutal environment, long hours, etc.)

2.Malnourished (their diet was all starches and carbs!)

Infamous Quotes on Slavery

On the profitable benefit of using slave labor“Our English here doth [Barbados] think a Negro child the first day it is born to worth 5 British Pounds; they cost them nothing the bringing up, they go always naked… They sell them from one to the other as we do sheep.”

On the subject of the degrading/dangerous sugar mill work…“If a mill feeder be cach’t by the finger his whole body is drawn in, and he is squeez’d to pieces.”

Fact: By 1700, Africans outnumbered their European masters by well over 10 to 1

What effect might this have on slave life?

Slave Codes in Barbados – The Basis Slaves were considered – “heathenish, brutes, of

a dangerous kind of people”

Invention of Slave Codes Master’s feared the slaves Barbados Codes become basis for other systems Order/Control through violence and fear.______________

Example: “putting a man to dry”

Example: “Drums, and other forms of widespread communication outlawed”

Example: To inspire cooperation and dissension among the slaves – shirt with “badge of red cross”

Example: Slaves to receive annual pants and cap (men), skirt and cap (women)

Example: Pig theft – slave was quartered for display

Final Thoughts

Today’s Closing Thought

What similarities do you see between Barbados and Jamestown?

3-5 Lines

Tonight’s HW

None