The sugar industry: economics and politics

It has been observed that the analogy between contract labour and slavery derives to a significant extent from the fact that both systems were utilized for the pro­duction of sugar.¹ As the sugar industry was the essential reason for the recruit­ment of workers, it provided the context in which indenture as a system of labour was to develop.

1 Engerman, Stanley L., �Contract Labor, Sugar, and Technology in the Nineteenth Century', The Journal of Economic History, 43 (1983), 635-659, p. 639.

DOI: 10.4324/9781003313366-8 situated the topic of this study in the broader history of the island. As previously highlighted, by the mid-19th century, Mauritius came to occupy the place of the British Empire's principal sugar producer. The British imperial approach to the recruitment of labour for the island must be understood as reflecting the wider economic and political considerations of the time.

6.2.1 Sugar and the British market

The sugar cane industry itself can be traced back to 700 A.D. in the Mediter­ranean, and it was not before the 16th century that the region had to give in to competition from the Americas.^[630] The world quickly developed an appetite for the commodity, and as observed by Sidney Mintz, “by no later than 1800, sugar had become a necessity - albeit a costly and rare one - in the diet of every English person; by 1900, it was supplying nearly one-fifth of the calories in the English diet.” As R. W. Beachey notes, British sugar consumption was on the rise ever since the passage of the 1846 Sugar Duties Act, and con­tinued to rise in parallel to successive reductions in the rate of sugar duties^[631] (see Table 6.1).

The 1846 Act had aimed to eliminate preferential rates by 1854, as indeed it did.^[632] It should be noted that what is commonly referred to as the “Sugar Duties Act of 1846” was actually a series of Acts which replaced each other,^[633] and had fur­ther relevant regulations attached to them.^{[634] [635] The sugar duties legislation was part}

Table 6.1 Sugar consumption in the United Kingdom per head, 1840-1880⁷

State-VegulateA immigration and, emergence of a peasantry 141 of a wider effort of the British government at the time to promote free trade prin­ciples and was passed in tandem with the repeal of the “Corn Laws”, measures originally designed to regulate the price of grain via tariffs on imports. However, in the period when Britain was expanding its power overseas, the policy of free trade was regarded as adverse to colonial policies.^[636] Integral to the Whig policy of the early 1840s was the abandonment of the system of “imperial preference” that had long not only protected sugar but also timber imports and shipping. Accord­ing to Anthony Howe, “colonial interest groups, like those of industry and agri­culture, were to be dethroned in favour of a self-regulating market economy, in which government would respond to the needs of the many (the consumers) by removing the privileges of the few.”

The underlying idea had been that with the removal of monopolies, produc­tion would increase and prices lower. The lower cost would lead to increased consumption, and in turn greater revenues. In the event, the sugar duties leg­islation led to “widespread distress” in the West Indies as well as in Mauritius.^[637] Duties on foreign sugar and a prohibition of specifically foreign, slave-grown sugar had protected the islands' interest by eliminating competition in the British market.^[638] The removal of these protective mechanisms at a time when the sugar colonies were seeking alternatives to slave labour in the aftermath of abolition lead to a crisis, especially in the West Indies, due to its financial encumbrances.

As mentioned in Chapter 2, a Select Committee Report of 1832 indicates that the West Indian economy was at that point already experiencing severe difficulties, which the planters themselves viewed as primarily the result of the abolition of the trade in slaves, but which the report noted had already existed prior to the ban.^[639] Having expanded their industry during the war years, it has been observed that falling sugar prices were inevitable during peace time.^[640] But to aggravate their situation, with tariff parity achieved by Mauritius in 1825, West Indian planters

at that time found themselves not only competing for the same market, but also the same sources of investment.^[641]

The crisis that followed the 1846 legislation exposed the nature of the West Indian sugar interest. The 19th-century sugar industry there commonly evokes the image of absentee proprietors or impoverished residents.^[642] In reality, much investment had been supplied by City of London merchants, not only in the form of capital to support the increasing demand for sugar, but also as standing creditors for the planters' debts which had been secured by the mortgaging of their estates.^[643] The merchant agent was the traditional source of credit for the planter and possessed significant influence over consignments.^[644] With the crisis, control over the sugar industry came to be concentrated in London, illustrated particularly in the creation of the “West Indian Encumbered Estates Court”, set up pursuant to an Act passed in 1854 and entrusted with disentangling the intri­cate charges with which the colonial estates were burdened.^[645]

Mauritius, in contrast, was not encumbered to the same degree as the West Indies. Nevertheless, the investment that the resident French planters had attracted from the metropolis gave them the avenue, via their British associates, to lobby the relevant groups at the Colonial Office in London.^[646] This advantage was used in particular following the abolition of slavery, when the Mauritian sugar industry was seeking alternative labour.

6.2.2 Seeking new labour

In the wake of emancipation, when the world market for sugar opened up, both “new” colonies (which included Mauritius, Natal and Fiji) and “ancient” ones (such as Jamaica, Trinidad and British Guiana) had to find the labour to supply it.^[647] Mintz suggests that the political struggle between the metropolis and the colonial planters was partially alleviated by what he describes as “recourse to external but politically accessible labor pools.”^[648]

State-VegulateA immigration and, emergence of a peasantry 143

The case of Mauritius appears to confirm this notion. The British government and the French plantocracy found themselves united over the sugar question, and by introducing Indian labour found a convenient avenue to further their interests. The so-called “labour shortage”, which will be addressed separately below, was framed in predominantly racist terms, in which both British and local French stakeholders conveniently converged.^[649] Engerman seeks to downplay the racial element, but in doing so actually emphasizes it. He claims: “The expla­nation for the shifting ethnic composition of the labor force is the attitude of the available labor supply towards plantation work, not some judgment that the Indians worked harder or that it was easier to evaluate and monitor their output potential.”^[650] However, it is precisely this concern for the “attitude” of the locally available labour, namely former slaves, which was used as a major argument in justifying the introduction of Indian labour, the effect of which operated to the detriment of the resident black population, as discussed below.

6.2.3 The decline of sugar cane

Sugar in the 19th century faced two crises. In the wake of the 1846 sugar duties legislation, there had been a commercial crisis, which had come about as the result of the financial entanglements within the industry.

Sugar cane was originally introduced in Mauritius during Dutch occu- pation.^[654] From the beginning, the European colonist favoured a plantation

system as the preferred method for cultivation, and as explained in Chap­ter 4, the tariff equalization of 1825 set Mauritius firmly on the path of an imbalanced monoculture. It must be understood that plantations, whether in Mauritius or elsewhere, presented not only an economic but also a social unit.^[655] As Tinker emphasizes: “Everybody in a sugar colony from the gov­ernor and the wealthiest merchant or landowner down to the meanest field hand was involved in the production of sugar for a distant market.”^[656] As a consequence, the entire infrastructure was set up with a focus on achieving a desired output. And “unless the economic base was transformed, everything would continue to function to serve that same purpose, whether under a system of slavery or under a system of nominally free labour.”^[657] In the event, emancipation did not ring the bell for an end of the plantation system. Pal Ahluwalia regards this failure to abandon the plantation system as responsible for the need for new migrants and their subsequent fate,^[658] a suggestion which the analysis contained in this chapter supports.

6.3