Sugar Revolution In Canada

It was 1861 when the first string of sugar plantations started to develop along the coast of northern Queensland, Australia. Queensland had previously been accustomed to having cheap labor at their disposal with the use of servants and convicts. Convict transportation came to a stop and the government soon was in need of increasing income to make up for the lost labor, similar to the Europeans around the same time. Europeans were big into trading and had “previously been interested in African nations and kingdoms… traders then wanted to trade in human beings” (Ismael Montana). Around the seventeenth century many enslaved Africans were being taken to Europe and the Americas to work on tobacco and sugar plantations. Initially convicts from Britain
(INTRO SOURCE) what started out as a 6-mill planation on the north tip of Queensland turned into providing 95% of all sugar to Australia. Due to the amounts of labor provided, those 6 mills could no longer keep up with the amassed amount of sugar that could now be produced. Over the course of 40 years the mills expanded all over the northern part of Queensland, gaining five times their size. More land was purchased, as much as 5000 acres, as well as expanded way past the limit of processing 168 tons of sugar a day. Kanakas could come over to plant, harvest, and maintain the sugarcane daily. Finding out that the Kanaka could work for a small fraction of what white men were accustomed to, made it possible to expand the labor into cotton fields and plantations as well. Children were taken off islands to accompany the working male force. Those who could contribute to the plantations rigorous work helped plant, and other were brought into Queensland homes to act as servants. Home chores, cooking, cleaning, and caring for children of working parents could now be tended to by Kanakas, which gave more of an excuse to transport more in. Australia was taking full advantage of the labor and their “cotton fields expanded and increased the exports of cotton to other surrounding countries that couldn’t keep the labor costs as low as Australia” (History of the Sugar Industry). By bringing in outside labor, the economy was benefited by increased total Gross Domestic Product, the total of the final goods and services produced in a country during a given period of time-usually measured in years, while keeping costs low. Areas that never could have expanded with the wages white men were accustomed to opened up more areas for production and trading of goods and eventually