Sugar And Slaves By Richard Dunn - 1514 Words

Lydia Phillips Dr. Hill HIST 300SS 9/15/15 Sugar Societies in the West Indies During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the sugar islands played a very important role for the British government. They saw these colonies as an extremely beneficial mercantile society that could gross them a great deal of wealth. However, for the colonists living on these islands it was an intense struggle between enormous fortune and a premature death. Richard Dunn, author of Sugar and Slaves: The Rise of the Planter Class in the English West Indies, 1624-1713, decided to shed light on these seldom mentioned groups of settlers, who chose the Caribbean islands over mainland America. The first settlers of the islands being buccaneers, along with their short lifespan, coupled with the monoculture of the islands and a severe disparity between the rich and poor, created a distinct culture, in what Dunn describes as a â€Å"classically proportioned sugar society† (Dunn 165). Dunn begins his book in 1624, with the English gaining a foothold on the tiny island of St. Christopher in the Caribbean. From that solitary outpost emerged a cohesive and potent master class of tobacco and sugar planters that spread throughout the Caribbean (46), especially in Barbados and Jamaica. Dunn refers to this society as a â€Å"classically proportioned sugar society† (165). What this means is that there were few very wealthy sugar planters who owned and managed large masses of slaves. Big planters, at their height, wereShow MoreRelatedThe Relationship between Sugar and Slavery in the Early Modern Period3546 Words   |  15 PagesDiscuss the Relationship between sugar and slavery in the Early Modern Period. No commodity on the face of the Earth has been wrested from the soil or the seas, from the skies or the bowels of the earth with such misery and human blood as sugar ...(Anon) Sugar in its many forms is as old as the Earth itself. It is a sweet tasting thing for which humans have a natural desire. However there is more to sugar than its sweet taste, rather cane sugar has been shown historically to have generatedRead MoreDeveloping Management Skills404131 Words   |  1617 PagesCreativity at Apple 212 SKILL PRACTICE 214 Exercises for Applying Conceptual Blockbusting 214 Individual Assignment—Analytical Problem Solving (10 minutes) 214 Team Assignment—Creative Problem Solving (20 minutes) 215 Moving Up in the Rankings 216 Keith Dunn and McGuffey’s Restaurant 217 Creative Problem-Solving Practice 220 SKILL APPLICATION 222 Activities for Solving Problems Creatively 222 Suggested Assignments 222 Application Plan and Evaluation 222 viii CONTENTS SCORING KEYS AND COMPARISON DATA