How Did Tea and Sugar Help Promote Slavery?

Slavery of any kind is bad and everyone knows it.

But one of the most powerful forces driving slavery was the combination of tea and sugar. Tea by itself was originally grown exclusively in China.The crop was labor intensive but labor was inexpensive and plentiful.

As tea became a trade good and eventually reached the shores of England and other European countries, sweeteners were required to meet European tastes. In England honey was used but disappeared because honey was produced in Catholic monasteries and these institutions were decimated when Henry the Eight formed the Church of England.

The British turned to cane sugar which was produced in abundance in the British dominated Caribbean Islands like Barbados and Jamaica. The crop of cane sugar was also in demand for the production of rum and molasses.

Harvesting and processing cane sugar was backbreaking work and the English resorted to slavery to fulfill the demand for sugar. The African slave trade boomed and eventually became institutionalized in the English colonies in America.

The net result was that tea sales grew dramatically and ships carried the tea west to Europe and England.Many of the same ships made the return voyage with a stop in the Caribbean full of slaves.