Sugar Production Of Barbados

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The cultivation of sugar was a lucrative enterprise as a result of the increased in sugar consumption in Europe. The increased demand for Barbadian sugar on the English market prompted planters with largest plantations to devote more than 80% of their estates to the production of sugar. As a result, Barbados and its planter class imported cheese, clothing, shoes, boots, butter, nags and other goods to sustain the plantation population. These commodities were manufactured at English factories and transported on English merchant vessels. Richard Ligon, a Barbados resident, reported that at least 100 ships entered Barbados yearly and brought tools for tradesmen, locks, knives, cloth, olives, capers, linen, swords, timbers, steel and other goods. …show more content…

English factories exported massive quantity of commodities to Barbados and West Africa on yearly basis. On July 23, 1653, during a council meeting at Whitehall, the council granted permission for a number of desired good to be exported annually to Barbados. The list included “12,000 doz. of shoes, there being at least 25,000 Christians in the island; shirts, drawers, caps, arms, ammunition, horses, tools and implements, all sorts of provisions and liquors.” The annual exports of goods are likely to have increased as the number of slaves increased in Barbados. In addition to these goods, planters imported a number of horses, ammunition, arms, pistols, gun powder, medicine, cheese, and butter per annum from …show more content…

The sugar cultivation created a demand for labor. Planters, though, spent money importing goods to maintain the plantation workforce, in the grand scheme of things; they still earned higher and steadier returns on sugar production because of the “unfree” labor of African slaves. When taken into account the cost and the amount of servants it would have required to maintain a successful sugar production operation, it would have been nearly impossible for planters to generate the amount of wealth they did in the decades following the introduction of sugar in

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