Barbados Molten Memories

Boiling Sugar: The Bitter Side of Sweet

In 18th-century Barbados, cane sugar production counted on cast-iron syrup kettles, an approach later embraced in the American South. Sugarcane was crushed utilizing wind and animal-powered mills. The drawn out juice was heated up, clarified, and vaporized in a series of pots of reducing size to produce crystallized sugar.



Barbados Sugar Economy: A Tragic Exploitation. The beginning of the "plantation system" reinvented the island's economy. Big estates owned by rich planters controlled the landscape, with shackled Africans offering the labour required to sustain the demanding process of planting, harvesting, and processing sugarcane. This system produced tremendous wealth for the nest and strengthened its place as a key player in the Atlantic trade. But African slaves toiled in perilous conditions, and many died in the infamous Boiling room, as you will see next:



The Boiling Process: A Grueling Job

Making sugar in the days of colonial slavery was  a perilous process. After harvesting and squashing the sugarcane, its juice was boiled in massive cast iron kettles until it crystallized into sugar. These pots, often arranged in a series called a"" train"" were heated by blazing fires that workers needed to stoke continuously. The heat was suffocating, the flames unforgiving and the work unrelenting. Enslaved employees sustained long hours, frequently standing near the inferno, risking burns and exhaustion. Splashes of the boiling liquid were not uncommon and might trigger extreme, even deadly, injuries.




Now, the large cast iron boiling pots points out this agonizing past. Spread throughout gardens, museums, and historical sites in Barbados, they stand as quiet witnesses to the lives they touched. These relics encourage us to review the human suffering behind the sweetness that once drove international economies.


HISTORICAL RECORDS!


Abolitionist literature on The Risks of the Boiling Trains

Abolitionist literature, including James Ramsay's works, information the dreadful dangers dealt with by enslaved employees in sugar plantations. The boiling house, with its dangerously hot vats, was a fatal office where fatigue and extreme heat resulted in tragic accidents.


Molten Memories: The Iron Pots of Sugar's Past - See the link for More

The Iron Heart of Barbados' Sugar