Read the passage from Sugar Changed the World. What evidence do the authors include to support the
central idea that the sugar plantations' cheap labor
source changed from enslaved people to indentured
Indians?
The end of slavery was a great step for human rights.
But what did it mean on the sugar plantations - which
had depended on extremely cheap labor to keep up
with the twenty-four-hour cycle from harvest to mill? In
1836, the same John Gladstone whose sugar estate
had exhibited the chained body of the slave leader
Quamina wrote to a shipping company. Gladstone
asked it to provide a hundred workers (the slang name
was "coolies") from India to labor on his plantations.
Gladstone's first ships, the Whitby, carrying 249
passengers, and the Hesperus, carrying 244, sailed for
Demerara in 1838.
O The sugar plantations depended on cheap labor.
O The sugar plantations had a 24-hour cycle.
Gladstone asked the shipping company to provide
workers.
O Gladstone exhibited the chained body of Quamina.