History Work

1. What did the Spanish colonists grow in the West Indies; what did the English & French grow? P. 459
Spanish settlers introduced
sugar-cane cultivation into the
West Indies shortly after 1500,
but these colonies soon fell
into neglect as attention shifted to colonizing the American
mainland. The French and English planted tobacco.
2. While tobacco was a New World plant long used byAmerindians, it became very popular? P. 460
To Europeans too it became very popular to the English colonies. the
English colonies prospered first, largely by growing tobacco
for export.

3. Europeans governments used “chartered companies”, what were chartered companies? P. 460
They were companies used to promote national claims
without government expense, France and England gave
groups ofprivate investors monopolies over trade to
their West Indies colonies in exchange for the payment
of annual fees.

4. List four fact that describe the Dutch West India Company’s business. P. 460
Not just a disguised form of the Dutch navy, the
Dutch West India Company was a private trading company.
Its investors expected the company’s profits to
cover its expenses and pay them dividends.Over the next fifteen years the new
Dutch owners improved the efficiency of the Brazilian
sugar industry, and the company prospered by supplying
the plantations with enslaved Africans and European
goods and carrying the sugar back to Europe. It seized the important
West African trading station of Elmina from the Portuguese
in 1638 and took their port of Luanda° on the
Angolan coast in1641.

5. Expansion of sugar plantations in the West Indies required? P. 460
The expansion of sugar plantations in the West Indies
required a sharp increase in the volume of the slave
trade from Africa (see Figure 18.1). During the first half of
the seventeenth century about ten thousand slaves a
year had arrived from Africa.

6. In the 17th century, indentured servants cost what incomparison to slaves? P. 461
Yet slaves were far from cheap. Cash-short tobacco
planters in the seventeenth century preferred indentured
Europeans because they cost half as much as African
slaves.

7. The cultivation and production of sugar required? P. 462
What made the sugar plantation a complex investment
was that it had to be a factory as well as a farm.
Freshly cut canes needed to becrushed within a few
hours to extract the sugary sap. Thus, for maximum efficiency,
each plantation needed its own expensive crushing
and processing equipment.

8. By-products of sugar manufacturing were? P. 462
thick syrup, The sugar crystals that formed
in the molds were packed in wooden barrels for shipment
to Europe, and The dark molasses that drained off was
made into rum in yet anotherbuilding, or it was barreled
for export.

9. Environmental damage to sugar plantations was caused by? P. 463
In some ways the mature sugar plantation was environmentally
responsible. The crushing mill was powered
by water, wind, or animals, not fossil fuels. The boilers
were largely fueled by burning the crushed canes, and the
fields were fertilized by manure from the cattle. In tworespects,
however, the plantation was very damaging to the
environment: soil exhaustion and deforestation.


10. As a result of the European colonization, the Arawak and Carib? P. 463
the indigenous Arawak peoples of the
large islands were wiped out by disease and abuse within
fifty years of Columbus’s first voyage.

11. On most islands, the percentage of slaves in the population was? P.463
On most islands 90 percent or more of the
inhabitants were slaves.

12. What was an 18th century plantocracy? P. 463
a small number of very rich men who
owned most of the slaves and most of the land.

13. Men outnumbered women on Caribbean plantations because? P 464
Because slave ships brought twice as many males as
females from Africa, men outnumbered women on
Caribbean...