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Jessica Handley
Bennett
Humanities II- Period 4
20 January 2016
Sugars Jarring Effect on Social Inequality in the Americas
Contrary to the popular belief that weapons and ships transformed Europe into
one of the worlds most prominent economic powerhouses, some could say that sugar
became an increasingly significant factor in the growth of capitalism in the European
colonies. With the innovation and invention of sugar plantations in Brazil and the
Caribbean, the colonies of the Americas, and in turn the entire Afro- Eurasian world,
would never be the same. The production of sugar, and other crops like it, would
ultimately create one of the most socially unequal hierarchies the world had ever seen.
Sugar has caused slaves, natives, and women particularly, to fight for their right to remain
important and socially equal figures in society.
The innovation of the production of sugar radically increased the social inequality
that slaves and natives had to face on a day to day basis. Particularly in the case of the
quality of life, slaves and natives were immediately placed on the lower end of the social
hierarchy. An unequal ecological exchange, enacted by inefficient food production,
caused British workers [to consume] sugar products even as Caribbean slaves starved.
This was mostly because so little real food was grown on many sugar islands, and food
imports fluctuated according to ecological and economic cycles (Moore 414). The fact
that this innovation of sugar production caused such an economic imbalance ultimately
increased the probability of an even greater fluctuation of slaves into the bottom of the

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social spectrum in the Americas. It forced the slaves to give up all traces of humane
freedom to the Europeans that took over their lands. With the great amount of stress that
the production of sugar put on the environment, these lands required a great amount of
labor to work it. The labor requirements were immense, exacting a high price in human
lives [and] much of the land was too steep for normal practices of cultivation and had
to be terraced (Moore 417). The extreme labor required to create this terraced landscape
caused the Europeans to go to great lengths in regards to finding a force of people to do
such work- natives. The amount of work the natives had to endure decreased their quality
of life to an even greater extent, in turn decreasing their position on the social ladder even
more. The complete extravagance of this innovation caused the Europeans to frivolously
set aside a need for the slaves to live as human individuals.
In the midst of this forced labor, there was an even greater divide between the role
of men and women in early colonial society. As a result of the Europeans greedy
innovation, they attempted to exhaust as many other human resources as possible. Even
slave women were more likely than men to work in the fields (Menard 318). This
gender inequality is a result of the European need for labor, in addition to American
societal norms. The fact that slave men were able to better themselves with the added
wealth that sugar brought to their lives, caused the European conquerors to obtain a
higher amount of slave women. This dehumanizing act, which is layered over continual
slavery, can only be labeled as an act of greed for the good of Europe. White women
would also sometimes be required to work on sugar plantations in the Americas. In all
their quest for economy, planters never sought a mechanical planting device. Instead,
they relied upon women, generally the wives of the resident plowmen, to perform this

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seasonal task (Reidy 193). This labor is a result of an additional need for a workforce
beyond men, who put most of their effort into more business-like encounters. The lack of
respect given to women in this situation can be described as a disconcerting attempt to
suppress the increasing need for sugar in global trading patterns.
Sugar undeniably changed the face of American trade in the early modern era. The
money-hungry Europeans desired for an irreplaceable workforce, which could only be
supplied by social classes that were lower than themselves. They exploited the use of
slaves, indigenous peoples, and women in American society to fulfill their demands.
Although the innovation of sugar surely increased the economic output of the European
conquerors, it demanded an inhumane way of acquiring a labor workforce. In order to
realize the jarring effect of the innovation of sugar on the early modern American
colonies, one must recognize that the inhumane and frivolous exploitation of socially
unequal labor only supported any increase in societal inequalities.