Technology+and+Environment

Fourteen to eighteen months after planting, sugar cane is ready to cut. New shoots were harvested every 9 months. Tools like spades used for planting, hoes controled weeds, and sharp machetes cut cane. Plantatons became complex because it had to be factory and farm. Freshly cut cane needed to be crush within a few hours to extract the sugary sap. This meant for maximum efficency, each plantation needed expensive crushing and processing equipment.Cane was crushed by heavy rollers in mills, that were powered by animals, humans, water, or wind.Lead-lined wooden troughs carried cane juice to large copper kettles in a boiling shed, where excess water was boiled off leaving the thick syrup. The syrup then was poured into conical clay molds in a drying shed. Sugar crystals from the syrup molds, were packed into wooden barrels and was shipped to Europe. Dark molasses was either made into rum or barreled for export.The crushing and refining machinery was used intensively to make a more efficient and profitable plantation. As a result West Indian plantations expanded and doubled in size from 100 acres to 200. Some plantations were even larger, Jamaica's for example, were extentious and luxuries in size. They specialized so heavily in sugar production that the island had to import most of its food. Saint Dominigue had a comparable number of plantations that were average in size with higher productivity. The French colony was more diverse in its economy. Although sugar production was paramount it also exported other crops like cacao and coffee. In some ways mature sugar plantation was environmentally responsible. crushing mill was powered by water, wind or animals, NOT fossil fuels. Boilers were largely fuelled by burning crushed cane while the fields were fertilized by cow manure. With two respects; soil exhuastion and deforestation.Repeated cultivation of a single crop removes more nutrients from the soil then manure and fallow periods can restore. Instead of rotating sugars with other crops to restore the land naturally, farmers cleared more lands as a more profitable way. Once land close to the sea was exhausted, planters moved to new islands. Many English who settled in Jaimaca were from Barbados. Pioneer planters on Saint Dominigue were from old French sugar colonies. The second half of the 18th century sugar production of Jamiaca fell short to Saint Dominigue which still access to virgin lands. Thus the plantations of this period were not a stable form of agriculture but rather laid waste to the landscape, in the search higher yeilds. A continuing trend that began in the 16th century that was the 2nd form of environmental damage was deforestation. Spanish cleared forests in Carribean to make pastures for cattle they introduced. Sugar cultivation rapidly excelerated land clearing, and forests near the coast were the first to disappear. By end of 18th century only land in interior part contained dense forests. Combined with soil exhaustion and deforestation other changes alttered the ecological balance of the West Indes. By the 18th century all the domesticated animals and plants in the Carribean introduced by Europeans. The Spanish had brought cattle, pigs, and horses, all of which multiplied rapidly that no new imports were necessary after 1503. New plants like bananas and plantains from the Canary islands served as a valuable addition to the food supply, sugar and rice formed the basis of plantation agriculture along with native tabacco. Food crops arriving with slaves from Africa, included; ocra, black eyed peas, yams, millet, sorghum, and mangoes. Many of the new animals and plants were useful additions to the islands, but they crowded out native species. New world foods also found their way to Africa. The most tragic and dramtic transformation in the West Indies occured in the human populaion. As the plantation economy spread the Carib were also pushed to the point of extinction. The West Indies were repeopled from Europe then Africa.