Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 3 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
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I Showed Seven Years Ago That, If The 200,000 Cases Of Sugar
Exported From The Island Of Cuba In 1812 Were Produced In The Great
Establishments, Less Than 30,000 Slaves Would Have Sufficed For That
Kind Of Labour.
It ought to be borne in mind for the interests of
humanity that the evils of slavery weigh on a much greater number of
individuals than agricultural labours require, even admitting, which I
am very far from doing, that sugar, coffee, indigo and cotton can be
cultivated only by slaves.
At the island of Cuba it is generally
supposed that one hundred and fifty negroes are required to produce
1000 cases (184,000 kilogrammes) of refined sugar; or, in round
numbers, a little more than 1200 kilogrammes, by the labour of each
adult slave. The production of 440,000 cases would consequently
require only 66,000 slaves. If we add 36,000 to that number for the
cultivation of coffee and tobacco in the island of Cuba, we find that
about 100,000 of the 260,000 slaves now there would suffice for the
three great branches of colonial industry on which the activity of
commerce depends.
COFFEE.
The cultivation of coffee takes its date, like the improved
construction of cauldrons in the sugar houses, from the arrival of the
emigrants of San Domingo, especially after the years 1796 and 1798. A
hectare yields 860 kilogrammes, the produce of 3500 plants. The
province of the Havannah reckoned:
In 1800 60 cafetales.
In 1817 779 cafetales.
The coffee tree being a shrub that yields a good harvest only in the
fourth year, the exportation of coffee from the port of the Havannah
was, in 1804, only 50,000 arrobas. It rose:
In 1809 to 320,000 arrobas.
In 1815 to 918,263 arrobas.
In 1815, when the price of coffee was fifteen piastres the quintal,
the value of the exportation from the Havannah exceeded the sum of
3,443,000 piastres. In 1823, the exportation from the port of Matanzas
was 84,440 arrobas; so that it seems not doubtful that, in years of
medium fertility, the total exportation of the island, lawful and
contraband, is more than fourteen millions of kilogrammes.
From this calculation it results that the exportation of coffee from
the island of Cuba is greater than that from Java, estimated by Mr.
Crawfurd, in 1820, at 190,000 piculs, 11 4/5 millions of kilogrammes.
It likewise exceeds the exportation from Jamaica, which amounted, in
1823, according to the registers of the custom-house, only to 169,734
hundredweight, or 8,622,478 kilogrammes. In the same year Great
Britain received, from all the English islands, 194,820 hundredweight;
or 9,896,856 kilogrammes; which proves that Jamaica only produced
six-sevenths. Guadaloupe sent, in 1810, to the mother country,
1,017,190 kilogrammes; Martinico, 671,336 kilogrammes. At Hayti, where
the production of coffee before the French revolution was 37,240,000
kilogrammes, Port-au-Prince exported, in 1824, only 91,544,000
kilogrammes.
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