The White Gold that built America
I read The Sugar Masters: Planters and Slaves in Louisiana's Cane World, 1820--1860; let's chat about it.
Ah, yes, so we all saw Nottoway Plantation on fire. Some folks celebrated, and although I'm not mad about it, to be excited is a waste of energy. Would you believe someone was doing a ritual on the land? After the fact! Girl, why weren't you doing that before? Ugh, that's so ass backwards! Ancestors turnin' over in they graves at that performative foolishness. It just grinds my gears, ya know?! Anyway, with the actual manor on the property gone and all of the attention it's brought, I thought it would be a good time to talk about the brutalities of sugar plantations in Louisiana.
Now, if you've been here for a while, you know I'm from rural deep South Louisiana, and on social media as The Bayou Baddie (yes, that's me!), my history, specifically the American Black South, is incredibly important to me. Now don't get me wrong, the brutalities of slavery in America and the Transatlantic Slave Trade is one of the most cruel and inhumane practices in the world.
But here's what a lot of people don't realize - while ALL plantations were designed to kill enslaved people for profit, sugar plantations in Louisiana murdered people at an especially horrific rate. Every plantation was a death sentence, but sugar plantations killed the people forced to work them within just a few years.
That's why I picked up Richard J. Follett's The Sugar Masters: Planters and Slaves in Louisiana's Cane World, 1820-1860. As someone from deep South Louisiana, I am on a forever mission to understand my history and while on that mission, I came across TSM. Now while we on the subject, I did mention that Nottoway LLC got ‘bout 10 - 12 businesses in its name. That’s right, while yall celebrating the building being burnt, the family is STILL making money of my folks. The entire thing just pisses me off, good grief. Anyhow, back to the review.
Richard Follett dives deep into Louisiana's sugar plantations and shows us something absolutely horrifying - how plantation owners figured out the perfect recipe for making money while treating people like they were disposable machinery. These weren't your typical "old-fashioned" slave owners. Follett's point is that Louisiana sugar planters were basically early capitalists who still played the paternalistic master role when it suited them. They'd pat themselves on the back for being "good masters" while running their plantations like brutal factories.
This book doesn't sugarcoat (pun intended) just how deadly these plantations were. Follett shows enslaved people working 18-hour days in crushing Louisiana heat with maybe 4-5 hours of sleep. The steam-powered mills were death traps where people got arms crushed in rollers and were scalded by boiling syrup - "accidents" that plantation owners just accepted as part of business.
The numbers are horrifying: 7-10% of enslaved people died every year, meaning most didn't survive a decade. And because sugar cane rots quickly after cutting, there was no mercy for anyone sick, injured, or pregnant. Meanwhile, masters manipulated people with small rewards while systematically destroying their bodies and minds.
Follett's research is solid - he went through tons of plantation records, letters, and diaries to show what was really happening day to day, not some sanitized version. He explains how new technology and business practices turned sugar production into a profit machine, but every "improvement" made life worse for enslaved people. Instead of talking about slavery in general terms, he shows you the actual relationships and daily struggles between specific planters and enslaved people.
Every plantation system was designed to work enslaved people to death for profit. On sugar plantations, people typically died within 7-10 years from 18-hour work days and deadly machinery. Cotton and tobacco plantations killed people through exhaustion, malnutrition, and brutal overwork - the same murder, just over more years of suffering. Every plantation owner knew the people they enslaved would die from these conditions and calculated human lives as acceptable losses for profit. Sugar plantations just killed people faster because of the time-sensitive processing and industrial machinery.
This book completely destroys any romantic ideas about "kind masters" looking out for their slaves. Ya’ll know about the Daughters of the Confederacy and how they rewrote history? Got some white folks really believing there were “good” planters and some enslaved folks “loved” their masters. Chile PLEASE (Let me know if you want more on that!). Anyway, in the book, Follett shows how acts of supposed kindness were really just manipulation tactics to keep people working harder. It's a wake-up call about how business success and human decency don't automatically go together.
The Sugar Masters is one of those books that makes you uncomfortable in the best way. It forces you to face some ugly truths about how people can justify almost anything when there's money involved. When I see places like Nottoway Plantation - whether they're standing or burning - I think about the thousands of people who died horrible deaths to build those pretty white columns and manicured gardens. These weren't just homes for rich families. They were headquarters for systematic murder operations that killed people for profit.
If you want to understand how slavery worked as a business, not the Hollywood version, but the real, brutal economics of it, this book is essential reading. And personally, I believe if you from Louisiana like me, it's required reading. Go ahead and add The Sugar Masters to your bookshelf to learn more about how capitalism and human exploitation intersect, or if you want to begin to try and understand how folks convinced themselves that treating other humans as property was somehow a
cceptable.