WI:Making sugar from sugar beet was invented and popularized in mid-17th century?

Slavery in the entire new world wouldn't have been rendered obsolescent, but the Caribbean lacked good cash crops other than sugar, they tried cultivating tobacco but it was low quality, and slavery would have received a real hit.
 
The Caribbean wouldn't have been settled remotely as heavily. 90% of the economy was based on cane sugar.

I have a TL where an ebola like virus wipes out tropical regions and the cane sugar industry is destroyed. OTL, I think the formula for good beet sugar was invented around 1740's but never really distributed until later.

Any ideas as to the relative cost of sugar production from beets as from cane in the 17th/18th century?

Anyone?
 
Any ideas how a lack of sugar production would hit the economy?

Would there be any hit at all?

It was a consumer good and, theorectically, the people of Europe would just buy something else with their money.

Did this ADD to the economy or just redistribute the wealth to a pricy thing to manufacture?

I know that governments came out well. It was an easy commodity to control and tax. Very difficult to smuggle and a luxury that wouldn't affect the poor as much as a hearth tax or harvest tax, etc.
 

Deleted member 67076

The Caribbean's economy undergoes a complete restructuring that would actually do it some good in the long term. While initially there'd be a massive economic crash (probably a population one too as less slaves get imported) and a relegation to a backwater, eventually new investments would see the region flourish once more.

For instead of just the insanely profitable sugar for most islands, you now get plantations that focus on other cash crops such as tobacco, quinone, citrus, Indonesian spices and probably cotton. Additionally, ranching, logging, shipbuilding, artisanal work and other forms of small scale light industry.

Big winner here in the short to mid term would be Spanish Hispaniola, as despite being the neglected stepson of the Spanish colonies it had a diversified economy from which sugar was a small part of its GNP. While other colonies have their economies crash Santo Domingo wouldn't even blink.
 
The Caribbean's economy undergoes a complete restructuring that would actually do it some good in the long term. While initially there'd be a massive economic crash (probably a population one too as less slaves get imported) and a relegation to a backwater, eventually new investments would see the region flourish once more.

For instead of just the insanely profitable sugar for most islands, you now get plantations that focus on other cash crops such as tobacco, quinone, citrus, Indonesian spices and probably cotton. Additionally, ranching, logging, shipbuilding, artisanal work and other forms of small scale light industry.

Big winner here in the short to mid term would be Spanish Hispaniola, as despite being the neglected stepson of the Spanish colonies it had a diversified economy from which sugar was a small part of its GNP. While other colonies have their economies crash Santo Domingo wouldn't even blink.


I'm not sure how many people would dare to go to the Caribbean and risk yellow fever and malaria (average lifespan was about 10 years) if there was no massively profitable crop there. Yes there were other opportunities but no one would go there for cotton or tobacco after the first few decades of watching 60% of a colony die in the first six months. They could go to the Carolinas or Louisiana and have a better shot at life.

I suspect the Caribbean would be a bigger haven for pirates, etc, than anything else.

There would be two America's: the Anglo-French colonies of the north which were settlements and the Spanish exploitative colonies of the south which were focused almost entirely on Gold and Silver.

The colonies as a whole would be viewed as less important and, hence, possibly colonialism.
 

Deleted member 67076

I'm not sure how many people would dare to go to the Caribbean and risk yellow fever and malaria (average lifespan was about 10 years) if there was no massively profitable crop there. Yes there were other opportunities but no one would go there for cotton or tobacco after the first few decades of watching 60% of a colony die in the first six months. They could go to the Carolinas or Louisiana and have a better shot at life.

Quite a few Southern Spaniards and Canarians were willing to do it, and in the highlands and drained swamplands much of the risk for diseases is drastically reduced. Of course you could always send serfs against their will or import indentured servants from Europe, Africa or the Indies. After a few decades, the population will have built up a resistance.

As well, we must remember that Quinone has been an effective anti malarial treatment since Incan times- its just that the plant had not spread outside the Viceroyalty of Peru until the late 1700s. Here the shifts in economy might trigger that, especially when one factors the massive loss of income that would come when the cane sugar industry collapses and there needs to be something to fill that void.

And now there's a new niche. Spices are easier to grow, are less brutal for workers (meaning you save quite a lot of money not having to replace them), can be grown in the same zone more or less and with new medicinal treatments the profit margins further increase.

Won't be easy and will take quite a while, but you can profit.

I suspect the Caribbean would be a bigger haven for pirates, etc, than anything else.
These aren't mutually exclusive.
 
Slavery and carribean colonies made the importation of sugar from sugarcane feasible. As per Wikipedia, sugar beet production in Europe did not take off until the early 1800s when loss of Haiti and British blockade of France in Napoleonic wars made that importation impossible.
 
I wonder how competitive beet sugar would be. It turns out that a French agronomist noted that syrup could be cooked from beets in the sixteenth century, so let's assume we start from there. Lots of good agronomists in Central Europe can be relied on to breed beets for higher sugar content. IOTL it took about 60 years to go from about 8% to around 16%, another hiundred to go to the current c. 20%.

IOTL the sugar beet industry was not competitive for the first 100 years. Of course that was the heyday of efficient slave agriculture, but I'm not sure the cost of production and transport would be that much higher in 1650-1700 than in 1750-1800. What produced the breakthrough was industrialisation (mechanised agriculture and steam-powered processing) and subsidies. Unless those become available earlier ITTL, beet sugar might become another continental substitute pushed by mercantilist governments to keep the money in the country. Germany after the Thirty Years' War would have the spare land to grow it on a large scale. Making it the land of cheap, low-grade sugar would be an interesting twist, but even so, the production cost might not be competitive. Beet sugar without machinery is ridiculously labour-intensive, and slave plantations in Brandenburg are not easy to envision.
 
Making it the land of cheap, low-grade sugar would be an interesting twist, but even so, the production cost might not be competitive. Beet sugar without machinery is ridiculously labour-intensive, and slave plantations in Brandenburg are not easy to envision.

Surely we can tie it into the rise of serfdom?
 
Quite a few Southern Spaniards and Canarians were willing to do it, and in the highlands and drained swamplands much of the risk for diseases is drastically reduced. Of course you could always send serfs against their will or import indentured servants from Europe, Africa or the Indies. After a few decades, the population will have built up a resistance.

As well, we must remember that Quinone has been an effective anti malarial treatment since Incan times- its just that the plant had not spread outside the Viceroyalty of Peru until the late 1700s. Here the shifts in economy might trigger that, especially when one factors the massive loss of income that would come when the cane sugar industry collapses and there needs to be something to fill that void.

And now there's a new niche. Spices are easier to grow, are less brutal for workers (meaning you save quite a lot of money not having to replace them), can be grown in the same zone more or less and with new medicinal treatments the profit margins further increase.

Won't be easy and will take quite a while, but you can profit. QUOTE]

Remember most of the early Spanish colonies were utterly moribund. Cuba was actually the best situated for growing sugar cane but they couldn't due to Spain's restrictive trade policies and inability to manage a merchant fleet.
That is how France was able to take Haiti, Spain was too incompentant to protect or colonize it. Same for the Lesser Antilles that Spain never colonized.
The populations were low and mortality was high. There were other things to grow but I can't imagine a tenth of the European colonists arriving in this scenerio that they did in OTL.
 
but the Caribbean lacked good cash crops other than sugar, they tried cultivating tobacco but it was low quality, and slavery would have received a real hit.

Err... What?
The tobacco that was planted in Virginia was useless until they got seed from the Caribbean. Cuban cigars are the ne plus ultra. Sure, it wasn't as PROFITABLE as sugar, but I've never read that the tobacco was low quality.
 

Deleted member 67076

Remember most of the early Spanish colonies were utterly moribund. Cuba was actually the best situated for growing sugar cane but they couldn't due to Spain's restrictive trade policies and inability to manage a merchant fleet.
That is how France was able to take Haiti, Spain was too incompentant to protect or colonize it. Same for the Lesser Antilles that Spain never colonized.
The populations were low and mortality was high. There were other things to grow but I can't imagine a tenth of the European colonists arriving in this scenerio that they did in OTL.

To which, I can only hope that the drastic loss of income will cause some sort of reform.

And there might be precedent for such a thing to happen. Historically, in Santo Domingo after the first collapse of the sugar industry in the early 1500s with the conquest of Cuba and the shift of sugar production there, the Crown relaxed its immigration policies and economic controls while encouraging settlement. This allowed the colony to make a drastic comeback.

Here, we'd be seeing a similar situation that's much more drastic and one that affects everyone in the region. Despite Spain's less intelligent decisions, necessity always forces some sort of change. Hopefully the case can be made to the elites in Madrid.
 
Surely we can tie it into the rise of serfdom?

Possibly, but there is still the issue of capital goods. Sugar refineries are expensive. To add insult to injury, beets don't yield usable fuel, so they'd be eating large amounts of firewood in an area already notoriously deprived of it. Perhaps it would work as a secondary crop, the way potatoes did. Have the serfs deliver a certain quantity every year, either at a designated place where it will be centrally processed, or as home-processed basic syrupthat will be shipped to the cities for further refining. But that's not the making of a global export industry.
 
So will the lack of sugar cane being produced mean rum does not become the drink of the Royal Navy?

Assuming that the sugar is made in Europe instead, rum will be the drink of pretty much everyone eventually. What else are you going to do with the tons and tons of byproduct if not turn it into hard liquor? Early Modern Europeans turned everything into alcohol that would even remotely lend itself to the purpose.
 
Top