Sugar, Slavery, and Sovereignty

With the discovery of the New World and economic shifts towards mercantilism, competition between European nations promoted the conquest and extraction of raw materials in the Caribbean. During the seventeenth century, the shift from the extraction of raw materials to the production of crop commodities affected the economic structures in both Europe and the Caribbean colonies. This research explains how changes in economic thought affected the economic, political and social structures of France, and by extension Haiti, Martinique, and Guadeloupe. Using primary and secondary sources, my research connects the rise of French sugar in the world market to the emergence of the French slave trade. I examine the relations between the plantation modes of production and the social relations surrounding the French sugar trade in Haiti, Martinique, and Guadeloupe during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The French slave trade from the West African coast to the Caribbean created a shift in the French labor force in the Caribbean, which affected the social, political, and economic relationships between different classes and races in Haiti, Martinique and Guadeloupe. Finally, I explore the how the circulation, and exchange, of revolutionary ideas of liberty, fraternity, and equality disrupted the social, political, and economic class structures in France, Haiti, Martinique, and Guadeloupe in the nineteenth century