What sort of Jobs would slaves have done in the 1700 ! x?
By the 1700’s most slaves in the west were the ones working on the plantations in the American south, or else on the English sugar plantations in the West Indies. In the American south slaves planted cotton, weeded cotton, harvested cotton, baled cotton. In return for spending perhaps three or four days a week generating huge profits for their southern masters, they might be allowed a day to work on their own land – growing just enough food to feed themselves. On the English sugar plantations slaves planted cane, weeded cane, harvested cane, and worked the machinery that crushed cane to extract the sweet pulp. Sugar was an important luxury commodity, its profits built English cities like Liverpool and Bristol. By the mid 1700’s there was so much popular outrage against the wretched lives of slaves in the English West Indies that a strong abolition movement began among English dissenting churches. But the US was lucky enough to fight a war to win its independence from England in 1776, s
