c**i
发帖数: 6973 | 1 The sugar trade | Sweet and Rich. Economist, Aug 13, 2011
http://www.economist.com/node/21525808
(book review on Matthew Parker, The Sugar Barons: Family, Corruption, Empire
, and War in the West Indies. 2011)
Quote: "A hundred years later [in late 18th century], the trade flowing from
Jamaica alone—sugar, slaves and rum, which was made from molasses—was
worth more than all the traffic with North America. No wonder the French
chose their sugar islands over Canada and Britain’s attempt to hold onto
its American colonies was so half-hearted.
Note:
(a) The review says, "In the 15th century Europeans first encountered its
sweet delights."
sugar
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sugar
Quote:
"Crusaders brought sugar home with them to Europe after their campaigns in
the Holy Land, where they encountered caravans carrying 'sweet salt.'
"In August 1492 Christopher Columbus [in his first voyage] stopped at La
Gomera in the Canary Islands, for wine and water, intending to stay only
four days. He became romantically involved with the Governor of the island,
Beatriz de Bobadilla y Ossorio, and stayed a month. When he finally sailed
she gave him cuttings of sugarcane, which became the first to reach the New
World.
(b) rum
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rum
Quote:
"Rum is a distilled alcoholic beverage made from sugarcane by-products such
as molasses, or, directly from sugarcane juice, by a process of fermentation
and distillation.
"The first distillation of rum took place on the sugarcane plantations of
the Caribbean in the 17th century. Plantation slaves first discovered that
molasses, a by-product of the sugar refining process, can be fermented into
alcohol.[10] Later, distillation of these alcoholic by-products concentrated
the alcohol and removed impurities, producing the first true rums.
Tradition suggests that rum first originated on the island of Barbados.
(c) molasses
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molasses
(d) For War of Jenkins’s Ear, see War of Jenkins’ Ear
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_Jenkins%27_Ear
(e) buccaneer
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buccaneer
(f) The Middle Passage: c.1600 - 1800. PBS, undated.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part1/1p277.html
("The [African] captives were about to embark on the infamous Middle Passage
, so called because it was the middle leg of a three-part voyage" from
Africa to the New World)
* Triangular trade
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triangular_trade
(g) Slave Trade Act 1807
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slave_Trade_Act_1807
("The act abolished the slave trade in the British Empire, but not slavery
itself; slavery on English soil was unsupported in English law and that
position was confirmed in Somersett's Case in 1772, but it remained legal in
most of the British Empire until the Slavery Abolition Act 1833") |
|
