Boiling Sugar: The Bitter Side of Sweet
In
18th-century Barbados, cane sugar production counted on cast-iron syrup kettles,
a technique later on embraced
in the American South. Sugarcane was crushed
utilizing wind and animal-powered mills. The extracted juice was heated, clarified, and
evaporated in a series of kettles of
reducing size to produce crystallized
sugar.
Barbados
Sugar Economy: A Bitter Exploitation. The
beginning of the “plantation system”
reinvented the island’s economy.
Big estates owned by wealthy planters
dominated the landscape, with shackled
Africans offering the labour needed to
sustain the demanding process of planting,
harvesting, and processing sugarcane. This system
generated enormous wealth for
the colony and strengthened its place as a
key player in the Atlantic trade. But African slaves toiled in perilous
conditions, and many died in the infamous Boiling room, as you will see
next:
The Boiling Process: A Grueling Task
Making sugar in the 17th and 18th
centuries was a highly
dangerous process. After
collecting and squashing the
sugarcane, its juice was boiled in enormous cast iron
kettles till it turned
into sugar. These pots, often
organized in a series called a”” train”” were
heated up by blazing fires that workers had to stir
continually. The heat was
suffocating, and the work
unrelenting. Enslaved workers sustained
long hours, typically standing near the inferno, risking burns and
fatigue. Splashes of the boiling liquid were not
unusual and might cause
extreme, even deadly, injuries.
A Life of Constant Peril
The
dangers were constant for the enslaved
employees tasked with
working these kettles. They laboured in
sweltering heat, breathing in dangerous gases from the burning fuel. The
work required intense physical effort and
precision; a moment of inattention
might lead to mishaps. Regardless of these obstacles,
shackled Africans brought
impressive skill and
ingenuity to the procedure,
ensuring the quality of the final
product. This product sustained economies
far beyond Barbados” coasts.
Now, the
big cast iron boiling pots points out this
unpleasant past. Spread
across gardens, museums, and historical
sites in Barbados, they stand as quiet
witnesses to the lives they touched. These antiques
encourage us to reflect on the human
suffering behind the sweet taste that once
drove global economies.
HISTORICAL RECORDS!
Abolitionist Reveal The Hotrrors of Boiling Sugar
Abolitionist
writings, consisting of James Ramsay’s works, expose the
ruthless
hazards
oppressed
employees dealt
with in Caribbean sugar plantations. The boiling
home, with its
huge
open barrels of scalding sugar, ended up
being a place of
unimaginable
suffering and fatal accidents.
{
Boiling
Sugar: The Bitter Side of Sweet |The Fatal Side of
Sugar: |Sweet Taste Forged in Fire:
The Sugar-Boiling Legacy |
Molten Memories: The Iron Pots of Sugar’s Past |
