Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 17, 2025
But the profits of sugar-growing were so enormous, in spite of their uncertainty, that, during the greater part of the eighteenth century, their little freeholds were bought up, and converted into cane-pieces by their wealthier neighbours, who could afford to buy slaves and sugar-mills.
The island was, happily for it, too poor for sugar-growing and the 'Grande Culture'; the Dutch were never tempted to increase the number of their slaves; looked upon the few they had as friends and children; and when emancipation came, no change whatsoever ensued, it is said, in the semi-feudal relation between the black men and the white.
It was loudly asserted by the planters and by the friends of the planters and of course the planters had friends everywhere in England that the sugar-growing business could not be carried on with any profit except by means of slave labor, and that the slaves could not be got to work except by the occasional use of flogging or other such needful stimulant.
Like Matanzas, it was the shipping point for a great sugar-growing district, and one of the finest sugar plantations in Cuba was in the vicinity of the city. The bay used to be a famous resort for pirates, but they were exterminated a great many years ago by war vessels of the United States. Now I will tell you the story of the Winslow.
Now that colonization is extending up the coast from Sydney northwards, and the inhabited parts of the Colony already approach the tropic of Capricorn, New South Wales ought, in a few years, to be a rice and sugar-growing country.
Already, I am assured, a marked improvement has taken place among them; and I, for one, heartily bid God-speed to the enterprise: to any enterprise, indeed, which tends to divert labour and capital from that exclusive sugar-growing which has been most injurious, I verily believe the bane, of the West Indies. On that subject I may have to say more in a future chapter.
They are to be procured through Messieurs Davidson, of Santa Cruz. The Canarians now talk of sugar-growing; but the cane will inevitably fare worse for want of water than either silk or tobacco. Next to cochineal in the Canary Islands, especially in Tenerife, ranks the gallo, or fighting-cock. Cockfighting' amongst ourselves is redolent of foul tobacco, bad beer, and ruffianism in low places.
This advice shows that Rodney's genius, though, with the prejudices of his time, he supported not only slavery, but the slave-trade itself, had perceived one of the most fatal weaknesses of the slave-holding and sugar-growing system. And well it would have been for St. Lucia if his advice had been taken. But neither ten-acre men nor dockyards were ever established in St. Lucia.
When it was found that the lava fields made the best sugar-growing soil in the world, American capital came in millions of dollars to be invested in great plantations of sugar cane. Trouble between the queen and American business interests became so serious in time that the queen was dethroned and the Republic of Hawaii was established.
The establishment at an early date of Punahou College, at which for a small sum both boys and girls receive a first-class English education, also contributed to retain them on the islands, and numbers of the young men entered into sugar-growing, cattle-raising, storekeeping, and other businesses here.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking