Western Civilization II / Unit 4 WC2 0311 short lesson, about 20 seconds
Sugar: The Colonial Product and the Plantation
Captions available
The idea
The prize was the Caribbean and sugar, consumption doubling every twenty-five years, the anchor says. Plantations were proto-industrial with their own rendering works. Native slaves died or escaped, so the Atlantic slave trade began in earnest by the early seventeenth century.
In practice
Life on a sugar plantation averaged seven years, the anchor's figure.
Where people slip
Sugar, not tobacco, drove the trade's first century.
Your place on the trail
Every lesson rests on earlier ones and opens later ones. Tap any to jump.
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