The Rise of 'King Sugar' and Enslaved Labor in Early English Jamaica

• Published in: Early American studies 2022-09, Vol.20 (4), p.576-596
• Main Author: Zahedieh, Nuala
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: 17th century; Agricultural production; Agriculture; Commodities; Historiography; International trade; Plantations; Slavery; Social change; Society; Sugar
• ISSN: 1543-4273; 1559-0895; 1559-0895
• DOI: 10.1353/eam.2022.0020

Richard S. Dunn's portrayal of the rise of "king sugar" in the early English West Indies accords the crop a deterministic role in the entire region's development with a sugar revolution used to explain broad patterns of economic and social change: above all the shift from indentured to enslaved labor. The sugar revolution concept, despite rigorous reassessment, retains purchase and the broad historiography follows Dunn's claim that, after a brief period of plunder, Jamaica settled into sugar monoculture by the 1690s to give rise to "the starkest and most exploitive slave system in British America." This article draws on research of the last fifty years and new data to reassess this narrative and finds it wanting. Trade and population figures show that "king sugar" was no victor in early English Jamaica, which was a dual economy with a relatively small-scale, diversified agricultural sector alongside a strong entrepot trade with the adjacent Spanish empire. Nonetheless, this diverse economy rapidly became a fully fledged slave society, in which the unfree outnumbered the free by 1673, and a harsh regulatory regime was put in place. The experience of the enslaved was far more varied than is commonly understood, and the complexities, contradictions, and collaborations involved in the process of building Jamaica's uniquely exploitive labor regime cannot be explained by a sugar revolution.