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Barbados Sugar and Rum

Agricultural region

⚠ WHERE CARIBBEAN SUGAR SLAVERY WAS INVENTED. Barbados took up sugar in the 1640s with Dutch capital and Brazilian technique, and within decades had converted from smallholdings worked partly by indentured Europeans to large estates worked by enslaved Africans — the model then exported across the English Caribbean, along with the BARBADOS SLAVE CODE of 1661 that other colonies copied. ⚠ THAT IS THE FOUNDATION OF THE FOOD SYSTEM AND IS STATED, NOT DECORATED. From sugar: molasses and RUM — Barbados makes a serious claim to the earliest documented rum distillation, with Mount Gay tracing to a 1703 deed, and "kill-devil" attested in Barbados in the 1650s. The RUM SHOP is still the island’s social institution. And CROP OVER, now a summer festival, began as the celebration marking the end of the cane harvest.

Atlas — where and when

Where in the world

Communities and languages

Languages: Bajan

What is recorded

  • Barbados adopted sugar cultivation in the 1640s using Dutch capital and Brazilian technique, converting within decades from smallholdings worked partly by indentured Europeans to large estates worked by enslaved Africans. This model, and the Barbados Slave Code of 1661, were subsequently exported across the English Caribbean. Barbados holds a substantial claim to the earliest documented rum distillation, with "kill-devil" attested in the 1650s and Mount Gay tracing to a 1703 deed. Crop Over originated as the celebration of the end of the cane harvest. documented
  • Barbados converts to sugar with Dutch capital and Brazilian technique, inventing the English plantation-and-slavery model later exported across the Caribbean, and codifying it in the 1661 slave code. documented

Related foodways

This foodway relates to

  • related to African Diaspora Foodways documented

    ⚠ Barbados is where the English sugar-and-slavery plantation model was invented and from which it was exported, along with the 1661 slave code.

Recipes

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