Supply versus Demand in the Barbadian Sugar Revolution

Bibliographic Data

ID4009673
AuthorsWilliam A Green (corresponding author)
Year1988
Volume18
Issue3
Pages403
Publication date1988-01-01
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueThe Journal of Interdisciplinary History (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0022-1953 • E-ISSN: 1530-9169
PublisherJSTOR (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.2307/203894
OpenAlexW2314034251
LanguageEN
Citations received7

ican slavery and the development of the Atlantic slave trade have been routinely explained in terms of the demand for labor experienced by New World producers of precious metals and agricultural staples. This emphasis on demand is consistent with what historians have deemed the common pattern of colonial settlement. Each new colony required a viable export product to cover its costs and ensure its economic survival. In tropical and semitropical colonies that product was usually an agricultural staple, the development of which gave rise to heavy demand for immigrant labor. High land/labor ratios prevailing in the colonies required that such labor be subjected to some form of coercion, and in time colonists from Chesapeake Bay to the Antilles chose to satisfy their manpower needs by resorting to African slave labor.1 Pursuing this approach, Williams, the pivotal figure in modern Caribbean historiography, tied the advent of British colonial slavery directly to the adoption of staple agricultural industries

Agricultural economics · Business · Commerce · Economics · Microeconomics · Natural resource economics · Sugar · Supply and demand · Supply side · Caribbean history, culture, and politics · Chemistry · Colonialism, slavery, and trade · Cuban History and Society · Food Science

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