Guadeloupe, a sugar island

For more than 3 centuries, sugar cane and sugar have been the foundation and driving force of the West Indian economy, profoundly structuring racial and social relations. This era is structured around two major cycles: the first is that of the slave-owning sugar plantation, which began in the mid-15th century, peaked in 1830 and declined until its demise at the time of abolition in 1848; then, from 1860 onwards, came the century of the factories, the local translation of the era of industrial capitalism and the beating heart of the island’s social and political history. After the fabulous growth of the post-World War II era, which culminated in 1965, Guadeloupe went through a crisis that meant it continued to produce sugar, but was no longer a “sugar island”.

The era of the slave-owning sugar plantation

Introduced in 1654 by Dutch planters expelled from Brazil, sugar production in “Père Labat” type sugar factories continued until abolition. This traditional system was most accurately described at the beginning of the 18th century by the Dominican Father Jean Baptiste Labat, based on his experience of managing several sugar mills for his order.

Slavery was of course the cornerstone of this method of production, as almost all operations carried out by slave labour. The average sugar plantation in Guadeloupe employed between 80 and 100 slaves. Working the land with a hoe, harvesting the cane with a sabre, transferring the juice into the boilers with large copper ladles … sugar was produced with the sweat of the slaves, sometimes tinged with their blood when, they were caught by the mill rollers or fell into the sugar boilers, exhausted.

It was during the English period, from 1759 to 1763, that the Guadeloupe sugar industry experienced its greatest growth. The number of sugar factories rose from 290 to 496, and production probably exceeded 25,000 tonnes. The revolutionary period, the first abolition in 1794 and the mass emigration of planters completely disrupted production, which fell to 3,900 tons in 1799. Slavery was reinstated in 1802, but it took several years to recover.

With the return of peace, the “loss” of Haiti in 1804, which opened up new markets, the resumption of the slave trade, even though it was theoretically prohibited, and the support measures for colonilal sugar introduced by the Restoration government for colonial sugar, the “Labat” system reached its peak: in 1835, Guadeloupe had 620 sugar factories producing 42,000 tonnes.

But after this peak, the development of beet sugar production in France and the inevitable disappearance of the slave system plunged the sugar industry into a deep crisis.

The creation of central factories and the industrial revolution in Guadeloupe

In the early 1840s, the idea emerged that the survival of colonial sugar production depended on a true industrial revolution, adopting the modern technology already used for beet sugar and centralising production in a few large “central factories” to process cane from the surrounding plantations. The abolition of slavery in 1848 marked the culmination of this radical change.

The modernisation of sugar production was accompanied by an intense process of industrial concentration. The large families that had owned plantations since the 18th century were gradually eliminated over a period of two or three decades, and their last representatives, having sold their property to the factories, were reduced to salaried workers. From the late 1860s onwards, the new manufacturing class tended to form a caste. The industrial elite remained separate from the rest of the population, distinguished by their economic power, wealth and lifestyle, as well as by their ideological and social closure to all that was external. Until the end of the 19th century, It literally stamped out Guadeloupean society.

Major fluctuations in the economy

1884 saw the beginning of a serious crisis that affected the whole of the Caribbean. It was triggered by growing overproduction, which led to a fall in the price of sugar. The last Père Labat-type sugar mills disappeared, and the weakest factories were liquidated. Creole millers were gradually eliminated, and their estates were either closed or taken over by metropolitan interests.

The crisis had a dramatic impact on the rural population of the sugar-producing region. Wages fell by more than half. Moreover, from 1902 onwards, in order to cut costs even further, the factories forced their workers to replace daily wages with “task wages”, a system that gave rise to the worst abuses, because the tasks, set unilaterally by the employer, were so onerous that they could not be completed in a single day. Abject poverty afflicted the population. It wasn’t until 1910 that their situation improved as a result of the first major cane workers’ strike.

From 1910, Guadeloupe’s sugar industry entered a period of growth that lasted for almost two decades. As a result of the 1914 war, the army needed large quantities of alcohol to make gunpowder and explosives. The beet-growing regions of Nord and Picardy were invaded or in the war zone, and only the colonies could supply it.

Growth continued until 1928. The period that followed saw an almost uninterrupted series of climatic, political, economic and social crises, which had a profound impact on the business and brought the sugar industry to the brink of ruin.

The "Twenty Glorious Years" and the golden age of the Guadeloupe sugar industry

Recovery began immediately after departmentalisation in 1946, driven by the sugar shortage in France at the time, which enabled the West Indian factories to sell off their wartime stockpiles at extremely lucrative prices.

For the factories in the French overseas departments in general, and Guadeloupe in particular, the immediate post-war period was probably the most prosperous in their history. But this prosperity was far from evenly distributed: the rural population was dying of poverty. For them, the end of the war meant no improvement in living conditions or standards. Scarcity and malnutrition persisted, inflation soared and wages failed to keep pace. In such unsatisfactory conditions, it’s hardly surprising that strikes are on the increase. Incidents between the French gendarmerie and strikers multiplied, the most serious being on 14 February 1952, when the police opened fire on the population of the town of Le Moule, killing four people.

Growth carried on at an extremely high rate until the mid-1960s; between 1946 and 1965, when production reached its historic peak, it more than quadrupled (from 45,000 to 185,000 tonnes). The sugar companies launched major modernization and expansion programs, most of which were financed by public aid. They also benefited from a relatively easing social climate. It can no doubt be credited to a slow, relative improvement in living conditions – even if, in 1965, the average per capita income was only a quarter of that in mainland France. At best, we’ve gone from misery to poverty.

The collapse of the 1970s and the end of the plantation economy

The 1970s were the worst period in the history of the sugar industry in Guadeloupe since the factories were created. A succession of climatic disasters (hurricanes, droughts) led to the collapse of the industry. In addition, the factories were built in the 19th century to take advantage of very low labour costs. But from the 1960s onwards, the steady, albeit slow and uneven, rise in wages meant that the companies could no longer bear the increased costs. From 1965, sugar cane farming in Guadeloupe was no longer profitable.

The continuing deterioration of the situation led to the emergence of a powerful protest movement among planters and agricultural workers, led by new trade union organisations linked to the then-growing independence movement. The whole of the 1970s was extremely turbulent, with long, hard strikes at the start of practically every harvest season and a proliferation of incidents of all kinds (heavy intervention by the gendarmerie, seizure of managers, occupation of land).

In the face of the crisis, the metropolitan companies, which are now nothing more than subsidiaries of large industrial and financial groups for whom overseas sugar is not a major part of their business, have been brutalised. In just a few years, they brutally withdrew, closing their factories and leaving the state and local authorities to deal with the situation. From the end of the 1970s, Guadeloupe’s sugar industry was almost entirely state-owned and kept afloat by public subsidies. After 1994, only two factories, Gardel and Grande-Anse, remained in operation. By the turn of the century, Guadeloupe was no longer a plantation economy.

Based on : Christian SCHNAKENBOURG – La Guadeloupe, île à sucre, trois siècles d’histoire de l’industrie sucrière, LES CAHIERS DE ANNEAUX DE LA MÉMOIRE. GUADELOUPE. N°18. 2018