Sugar Trade

Chapter 9, "In the Kingdom of Sugar" describes the changes increasing sugar trade with the West Indies and England had on the economy of New York. By 1720 when England was in control of the city, New York had at least 200 ships visit its port each year. Since 1660 England's consumption of sugar had increased a hundredfold. A growing middle class in England enjoyed products such as chocolate, coffee, and cakes all sweetened with sugar from the West Indies. This sugar was grown on the islands of Barbados, Jamaica, Antigua, and others, and was referred to as "white gold" since it was making the English plantation owners very wealthy. These planters didn't want to waste any planting space on other crops or livestock, so they came to rely on products from New York including corn, flour, pork, and beef. Imports (other products brought into New York) from the tropics included indigo, lime juice, cocoa, and ginger. Some businessmen, including Colonel Lewis Morris, grew these trade connections to the West Indies into great profits.

Agriculture around the city grew to keep pace with the demand for products needed in the Caribbean. These farms needed many hands to raise crops.  Slave labor was used by the wealthy landowners of these farms. A trade loop connecting England, Africa, the Caribbean, and the other North American colonies became very busy. Lewis Morris, nephew to Colonel Morris, became a major slave-owner to keep his plantation and village in the Bronx working to produce oats, corn, barley, wheat, livestock, and lumber for export.

This increased trade demanded more ships. Shipbuilding grew in Manhattan. Sloops with a single mast, and two-masted brigs were built in yards along the East River. Other businesses, such as sugar refining houses, distilleries turning molasses into rum, and snuff houses grinding and flavoring tobacco, sprung up as a result too.

Mariners were a common sight. These men loaded, sailed, and unloaded ships. Their lives weren't easy. They didn't prosper much from their hard work and never stayed in one place for very long. They were a coarse lot as well, that were looked upon with a certain amount of disdain by the merchants of the city. It was said that the sailor's motto was "A merry life and a short one," due to the hardships mariners' life presented.

The growing economy led to many more artisans. By the 1720s, goldsmiths, silversmiths, watchmakers, coachmakers, potters, and jewelers produced luxury goods for prosperous New Yorkers. Men engaged in these trades while women produced candles, soap, yarn, cloth and clothes. Slaves were often used by merchants and wealthy artisans to do the most laborious tasks.  Sometimes an artisan might teach his slave his craft in order to meet the growing demand for his product. Due to the short supply of cheap labor, slave-owning became more common by 1730, so that New York held the greatest concentration of slaves north of Virginia. The sugar trade had transformed New York into a prosperous, bustling port.

Notes on Gotham

I'm into the ninth chapter of Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898. However, you shouldn't be too impressed because this book (a tome, really) is sixty-nine chapters long so I've barely made a dent.

From the Lenape habitation sites, to becoming a key port in the sugar trade, lower Manhattan has a vibrant history with commerce as a constant. Other themes in the flow of history from the beginning of Dutch settlement through the Anglicization period of the early 1700s include the reigning leader's imposition of his own religion on the settlers, usually with little success. Many early leaders, from the East India Company's Peter Stuyvesant to Anglican Royal Governor Cornbury, attempted to put order to this trading center. Most leaders considered the common settlers a bawdy, drunken lot that needed an infusion of religion and morals. Other than scoring political points with interested parties back in the home countries, these efforts usually had little lasting effect on the residents.

Now that this blog is up, I will try to post comments and observations as I continue reading Gotham.