Sugar & Slaves
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History is written by the winners, not the losers. As such, the writing that often comes to be accepted as history is normally from the perspective of those who wielded economic and political power during the period being covered. This produces in the finished text a history that is often biased and one-sided at best and outright dishonestly misleading when it comes to portraying the “whole” history of a period. Such a text is Richard S. Dunn’s Sugar and Slaves: The Rise of the Planted Class in the English West Indies, a book that covers the enormous wealth acquired by the early white inhabitants of the English West Indies. In an attempt to chronicle the story of the rise of the English Protestant planter class, Dunn sprinkles more sugar on his work than produced on any plantation in an attempt to raise empathy for a despicable class of men who exploited the poor and uneducated through force and brutality for sheer economic gain.The author utilizes many tactics to have us believe that the men who invaded the West Indies and by force enslaved a population of blacks and Indians were actually adventurous, industrious and even heroic explorers who deserve their tale preserved for history. This is nowhere more evident than in his revelation of his purpose, which is to answer these three questions: “How did the early English planters in the West Indies respond to the novelty of life in the tropics? To the novelty of lar
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nd know that power and wealth are always in the hands of the few not the many. Further, Dunn also reveals the methods by which the wealthy white elite retained power and control over an entire people. He admits that keeping them uneducated and keeping them poor were definite means of control, “Organized religion was not so much sabotaged as muzzled by the planters, who controlled the parishes and made sure that the Anglican clergy tried no mission work among their slaves…Nor were the planters enthusiastic patrons of education and culture” (Dunn 339).
The small bit that represents the good of Dunn’s book is greatly overshadowed by the huge amount that is bad. Aside from his trying to justify that the Protestants were not racist, merely money hungry, and the fact that he tries to paint them as an admirable portrait is secondary compared to his blatant myopia when it comes to his complete lack of empathy for the enslaved populations and his incredulous amount of concern and care for a class of white people who were brutally enslaving an entire people for greedy self-interest. This can be seen once more in his use of language that tries to appeal to our emotions and raise our concern for the “poor” white planters, “By 1680 the
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Some common words found in the essay are:
Rockefeller Dunns, Williamsburg Virginia, West Indies, English Language, Exploitation History, English Protestant, Industrial Age, planter class, west indies, dunns book, English West, english west, entire people, enslaved populations, sugar slaves, english west indies, Press NC, Class English, empathy enslaved populations, poor uneducated, nouveau riche, class english, social polarity stratification, class english west, extreme social polarity,
Approximate Word count = 1668
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page)
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