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This is the story of a world whose borders

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and territories were drawn 
by the slave trade,

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where violence, subjugation 
and profit imposed their own routes.

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This criminal system shaped our history
and our world.

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On São Tomé, the Portuguese
invented an economic model

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with unprecedented profitability:
the sugar plantation.

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This was the first black colony,
the first slave society.

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We witnessed the marriage of the black men
with sugar cane.

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In the 16th century, other European powers
were eager to follow their model.

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Their greed would plunge
an entire continent into caos and violence

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Nearly 13 million Africans were cast onto
new slavery routes to the new world

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where the English, the French
and the Dutch hoped to become wealthy,

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immeasurably wealthy.

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Because the Caribbean
has similar climatic features to São Tomé,

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it eventually became
the principal crossroad of the slave trader's route

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For people on the western world,

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these islands are today
associated with vacation.

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Guadeloupe offers tourists
a dream destination.

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Sunshine and pristine nature

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Rekindling myths of a lost paradise

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Holidaymakers tend to confine themselves to
the beaches of (foreign names)

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But as this sign indicates they are all too close
to another side of the islands heritage

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That was anything but a paradise

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Just a few meters away from the bay there is
a burial site where countless skeletons were discovered

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Between 501,000 graves are still buried beneath the sand

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The (foreign name) beach is 1 of 15 cemetaries that
have been excavated

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15 among the 1,000 that exist in the Caribbean

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89 skeletons have been exumed by French archaeological
research experts

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Judging by the state of the bones, they concluded that
these men and women had not reached the age of 30

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By the time of their death the toll from working on
the plantations had so deformed their bodies

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that they seemed more like 75 year olds

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These people were human guinea pigs for the
sugar expirament

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The collateral damage of an unprecedented
trade war, The Sugar War

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74% of all slaves carried off, were carried
off because of sugar

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If you want to understand the slave trade you
just need to know about sugar

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Sugar proved more addicitve than pepper or cinnamon

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From the 17th century onward Europeans craved
this rare and expensive commodity

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In London, Amsterdam and Paris sugar fever was rampant

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Prompting a new generation of adventurers to go
to any extremes to get it

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Shipowners and fitters, merchants and pirates all knew
that to produce sugar you need a lot of slaves

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John Hawkins was one of these new entrepreneurs
for whom profit reigned supreme

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The English privateer was a pioneer in understanding
that fortune could be made by shipping black captives to the new world

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In the mid 16th century he convinced Queen Elizabeth the 1st
to lend him a ship, The Jesus of Lubec

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For the expedition Hawkins conspicuously set the tone
by choosing a trussed up black man on his emblem

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"I do confirm to your highness that I will bring home 40,000 marks
without any offense of the least to any of your highnesses, allies or friends

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I will conduct this enterprise and turn it to the benefit
of your whole realm with your highnesses consent

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the voyage I propose is to load negroes in Guinea
and sell them in the West Indies

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in truck of pearls, gold and emeralds that I will bring back in abundance"

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1620, a century after sugar plantations were introduced
in Brazil

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The Atlantic became the battleground for the sugar war

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England, The Netherlands and France wanted
to break Spain and Portugals hegemony

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In the Caribbean the Dutch took control Coracao, Sint Eustatius and Samata
The French, Guadelupe, Martinique, Granada and Santo Mal

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The English occupied The Bahamas, Jamaica, Antigua, Barbados and Dominica

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Only Cuba and Puerto Rico remainded under Spanish rule

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After the extermination of the native Arawak people
the first sugar canes flourished on this fertile land

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The Caribbean became a space of conquest
for the Europeans very early on really

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It was the first place that Columbus landed in the new world

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Um, the first place that the Spanish began to search for gold
and the first place they began to enslave the Indians

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So they were thoroughgoing
Konya spaces created by design

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of European planters and Imprial policy makers
and for their profit right

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There arent so many places where you can
completely overlay a territory like that

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So there, in some ways, the Caribbean is the space
where you find the purest of Colonial territories

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Where the masters of the space actually get to
create the space to suit their own needs

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In Guadalupe every plot of land, every single square inch of ground,
is connected to this violent and deeply rooted history

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Today all that is left of sugar war is a field of ruins

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Of the 250 sugar refineries active in the late
19th century only two remain in operation

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In 2017, experts from France's national institute of
preventive archeological research

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exhumed the remains of the (foreign name)
residents and sugar refinery in (foreign place)

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A mill, stock rooms and three rows of so-called negro huts,
where hundreds of slaves were penned up together

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In this brutal work camp human beings were but one tool among others

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Each became a mechanized emaciated body
consumed by work until their final breath

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Both the time in which the slaves were digging the
cane holes and the times in which their harvesting

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are really the peak of the labor on a plantation

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You could almost see the slaves wasting away
when they were digging these cane holes

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because the work was so strenuous and
they were getting fed so poorly

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You found women in all of the gangs often times
doing the hardest, dirtiest labor on the plantation

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Alongside the men or even before the men
and one of the things that means when

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you find young women doing this quite debilitating labor
is that the birth rates are very low

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and the mortality rates, the infant mortality
rate is shockingly high

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In the mid 18th century people talked about
9 out of 10 infants born

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to enslaved Jamaican women dying, right,
within the first year

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So, there's no way in which the plantation can
reproduce itself under those kinds of conditions

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The plantations were managed by overseers who
saw the slaves in purely functional terms

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This was an absolute exploitation of the workforce
It was a very particular society

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Because the average rate of life expectancy
on a plantation was extremely low

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About 8 to 10 years after arriving

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The logic of the slave system was one where the
availability of the workforce had to be absolute

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and for this man was conceived as an accessory of the land

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He appeared as such in house inventories

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Slaves are listed next to records for livestock
or manufacturing implements

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That's the archaic aspect which was put
to use by a capitalist system and which largely

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met market supply and demand with
its fluctuations needs and competition, free competition

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The sugar plantations saw slavery enter a new era

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The stronger the demand for sugar
the more the slave trade expanded

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and the more the slave traders sought support from banks
to finance there expeditions

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London is one of the oldest centers
of global finance

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The city of London was the first to create commodities exchange
to develop credit markets and to issue banknotes on a massive scale

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Without the invention of a centralized banking system
the explosion of the slave trade in the 17th century

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Would not have been possible

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Preparing for a slave expedition was expensive and
having a financial arsenal

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gave England a decisive advantage over its competitors