What happens when you build an empire on sugar? Since the 18th century, sugar has been one of the most demanded commodities in the West. By the 1700s, technological advancements and production made sugar accessible to even some of the poorest Americans and Europeans, and imperial governments poured millions of Read more…
Duggie Mack was one of three young Jamaicans who traveled with a delegation to Ethiopia in 1961 searching for a way to move all of his people “back to the Promised Land.” The Rastafari, like many Pan-African movements before them, preached a ‘repatriation’ dream, and Mack hoped to make that Read more…
The history of slave rebels and resistance in the Caribbean is a rich and complicated story. Enslaved people in the Caribbean resorted to active resistance much more often than their North American and South American counterparts. Haiti (known then as Saint-Domingue), Jamaica, Barbados, and the Dutch Guianas were particularly prone Read more…
Averill, Marissa, and Katie discuss the history of sugar cultivation in the Caribbean, and its relationship to empire and consumerism.