teadily consuming more of it, and desiring more than they could afford” (Mintz 45). Similar to factory workers, cheap labor was used for mass production of commodities to meet the growing demand.As a result, Mintz completely transformed my ideas on industrial capitalism. As a consumer and lover of sugar, I have now given a considerable amount of thought to the sugar that I consumed so often. The extent to which the Caribbean people and land were exploited is unfathomable. When speaking of a “plantation”, Americans usually think and refer to the cotton plantations in the South. Even those Americans with roots in the Caribbean are completely unaware of the exploitation of their land and people. The long-term effects of this exploitation led to the underdevelopment of these Caribbean countries. These effects are still evident today as most of the Caribbean islands are labeled as “Third World Countries”.In addition, Mintz mentions the separation of the production from consumption. The Major consumers of sugar were not the hard workers on the plantation, but the far removed citizens of England. The plantation workers were not able to profit from the fruit of their land. They were forced to work under harsh conditions. Even after slavery ended, the workers were over-worked and under-appreciated just as factory workers were in the documented and “established” industrial societies Americans have been trained to visualize.Industrial capitalism involves an organization involving ownership, control and direction of production. This was what took place on sugar plantations in the Caribbean. Every worker had set duties and a unified goal of mass production of sugar at the most efficient rate. Mintz does an excellent job of contradicting the European version of world history fed to most of the Western world by proving that industrial capitalism originated in the Caribbean sugar plantations. ...
