Nature's Evil [calibre 5.27.0]

It was the sugar trade that engendered the policy and practice of British mercantilism. * In accordance with the Navigation Acts, all goods had to be transported on British ships; colonies could trade in raw materials with each other but could not export them; they could only buy manufactured goods produced in England; and no industry could develop in the colonies apart from the primary processing of raw materials. Thus the mercantile regime underwrote the supply of sugar to the metropole, guaranteed the markets for manufactured goods in the colonies, created profits for the merchants and supported the commercial fleet. The mercantile regime drew a sharp distinction between manufactured goods and raw materials, linking these economic categories to the political difference between the colonies and the metropole: raw materials are sourced in the colonies, goods are manufactured in the metropole, and that is how it must ever be. Members of the British parliament openly cited ‘the West India interest’ in their speeches. On the eve of the Seven Years’ War there were fifty to sixty votes representing this interest, and they supported the mercantile laws and the sugar monopoly. 7 William Pitt the elder, the Whig leader and prime minister, fought honourably for the privileges of the West Indies; William Beckford was his friend and financial sponsor.

Holland and France had their own mercantile legislation, but their trade regimes were not as consistent as that in England. The French colonies, such as Saint-Domingue and Guadeloupe, were producing sugar more cheaply, using fewer slaves and less land per sack. The French legislation in the islands, based on the Code Noir established by Louis XIV, was more humane than the English. The French planters weren’t protected by a group monopoly; they had to compete among themselves, which kept prices low and focused on productivity. Selling for half the price of the English product, French sugar conquered the European markets. All this led to the Seven Years’ War, which ended in an English victory. But the outcome was paradoxical. The English seized the big sugar islands of French Guadeloupe and Spanish Cuba but did not annexe them: this would have caused sugar prices to crash. Instead, the English preferred French Canada and Spanish Florida. The control over prices was more important than an increase in sales. Nevertheless, sugar prices fell because of competition with Brazil and the record growth in the number of plantations on Jamaica. The planters were the first to learn an important lesson of capitalism: luxury items generate profit, but only mass consumption brings super-profits.

From being a luxury, sugar became an everyday item. Without it there would be no rum, no jam, no puddings or cakes. The per capita consumption of sugar in England grew more quickly than the consumption of bread or meat. According to Sidney Mintz, 8 in the eighteenth century the annual consumption of sugar increased from 4 to 18 lbs per person. Millions of people were now working in factories, and a cup of tea with sugar replaced their customary ration of gin and beer. In poor families people derived a fifth of their energy calories from sugar. As with alcohol, people feel they can’t have too much sugar: the more you eat, the more you want. Together with oriental luxuries, which had come down in price dramatically in the eighteenth century – porcelain cups, cotton tablecloths, soft furnishings – sugar, tea and coffee played a leading role in shaping the new way of life. Its substance was social pleasures, its output the public sphere, its first locations the coffeehouse and the club. The first London coffeehouse was opened by a Turkish merchant in 1652; soon coffeehouses and tea shops spread across Europe. In eighteenth-century London, chocolate clubs became fashionable. These were pricey establishments with a closed membership, and they did not admit women. Aristocrats met there to play cards and sneer at the neighbouring coffeehouses, where anyone could enter to drink coffee, read newspapers and engage in debates. In 1777, David Hume wrote: ‘An author is little to be valued, who tells us nothing but what we can learn from every coffee-house conversation.’ 9 Two hundred years later, his fellow philosopher Jürgen Habermas linked the history of the Western public sphere with the development of coffeehouses. 10