This website is the product of the University of Miami students who took the Spring 2000 edition of History 300: "Caribbean: Slavery and Resistance." Why did we address this particular subject?
On the different pages of this site, using short essays and illustration, maps and group statements, they try to address the different aspects of slavery on the Caribbean islands colonized by the English and the French. These islands were the center of the world’s production of sugar from the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries that follow. By importing enslaved Africans and forcing them to work at backbreaking, often life-destroying labor, the white planters of these islands and the merchants with whom they dealt were able to produce tremendous profits. That blood money, the wealth made from sugar and forced labor, in turn helped fuel the explosive growth of Europe and North America during those same centuries. But enslaved people, though exploited, were not submissive. They constantly rebelled and resisted their fate, whether through organized rebellion, individual violence, or still more subtle means. This is their story. |
