3 - Plantations, Sugar Cane and Slavery

Abstract

This chapter discusses the main structural features of the plantations established in the tropical New World, the history of production and manufacture of sugar, and the plantation slavery. The sugar plantations of Cyprus, Crete and the other islands in the Mediterranean were sources of wealth for their founders and owners as both autonomous kingdoms and as colonies of Italian city-states. The plantations in Madeira, the Azores, the Cape Verdes, and Sâo Tomé, however, not only were sources of wealth but also a means of settling new territories that became a part of and of strategic value to the Portuguese nation in the implementation of its foreign policy. That is, the plantations not only were of value in their own right and they also served as a model for colonizing new regions that had to be settled for other reasons. The plantation system was to be the key to establishing settlements that were to make these islands loyal Portuguese dependencies. That the plantations themselves were not always successful, in that many never produced crops of commercial value, was insignificant in the larger scheme of things. They made it possible for Portugal to secure a strategic part of her now enlarged national territory.