How will slavery be handled?

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couldnt they switch from producing sugar to something else like cofee or tobacco cocaine cannabis etc?

 

[Earl Uhtred]

Originally posted by Che Gorilla
One interesting what-if would be a U.S. that greatly increased support for a "Back to Africa" movement. An uber-Liberia that absorbed a much larger number of returning Blacks. Significant numbers of Black, Union Army vets could be induced to received their 40 acres and a mule... in West Africa.

Like it.

 

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Huge-Liberia? Guess it could work... but it might also make the European powers a little itchy... (Hey, the USA is taking land in Africa, why are we doing nothing?)

 

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Originally posted by azid
couldnt they switch from producing sugar to something else like cofee or tobacco cocaine cannabis etc?

They could, and they did, but the profits weren't in any way so high. Sugar was as good as a gold mine for the Caribbean islands from 1500 to 1800. The sugar reached very high prices (in fact there is, for example, a tale about the Polish Lancers of Napoleon's Guard, they were supposedly so affluent that they not only had always a pot of coffe brewing in their camp, but even the lowliest private drank his coffee with sugar...) but to sugar was added rum, and molasses too, which was used in a wide range of food and 'chemical industries'. In many islands, in fact, small lots of land used for subsistence agriculture slowly overtook the old plantations, while in others like Jamaica with coffee (have you ever heard the words 'Blue Mountain'?) and Cuba with tobacco other exportation crops substituted sugar cane, at least partially.