Read the passage from Sugar Changed the World . You could date a great change in the world to a visit one Madame Villeneuve made to France in 1714. That year, Pauline, an enslaved woman from the Caribbean, arrived in France as the personal servant of her mistress. When Madame Villeneuve set off from the coast to visit Paris, she left Pauline in a convent. The young woman spent her time studying with the nuns and went so far in her training that she asked to become a nun herself and remain in the convent. The nuns agreed, which enraged Madame Villeneuve. She rushed to a judge, demanding to have her property back. Was Pauline a free woman, a bride of Christ, or an item to be bought, sold, and warehoused when she was not in use? Twenty-three years earlier, King Louis XIV had issued a set of rules that defined slavery as legal in the French sugar islands. But when two slaves managed to reach France, he freed them—saying they became free "as soon as they [touched] the soil" of France. The judges sided with Pauline—she was real to them, human, not a piece of property. For Pauline's judges, as for King Louis, slavery far off across the seas was completely different from enslaved individuals in France. What claim do the authors make in this passage?
Read the passage from Sugar Changed the World . Sugar was the connection, the tie, between slavery and freedom. In order to create sugar, Europeans and colonists in the Americas destroyed Africans, turned them into objects. Just at that very same moment, Europeans—at home and across the Atlantic—decided that they could no longer stand being objects themselves. They each needed to vote, to speak out, to challenge the rules of crowned kings and royal princes. How could that be? Why did people keep speaking of equality while profiting from slaves? In fact, the global hunger for slave-grown sugar led directly to the end of slavery. Following the strand of sugar and slavery leads directly into the tumult of the Age of Revolutions. For in North America, then England, France, Haiti, and once again North America, the Age of Sugar brought about the great, final clash between freedom and slavery. Which sentence best states the authors' claim in this passage?
Read the passage from Sugar Changed the World . By the late 1700s, Saint Domingue (what is now Haiti) was the world center of sugar. So many sugar plantations dotted the landscape that slaves called commanders managed other slaves. On the night of August 14, 1791, commanders from the richest sugar plantations in Saint Domingue gathered in a place called Alligator Woods and swore a solemn oath. They would rise up against their white owners, "and listen to the voice of liberty which speaks in the hearts of all of us." That voice told them to destroy everything related to sugar. Sugar made the Africans slaves, so sugar must be wiped off the island, now a vast sugar factory to the world. By the end of August, the French colony was in flames. So many cane fields were on fire that the air was filled with "a rain of fire composed of burning bits of cane-straw which whirled like thick snow." Smashing mills, destroying warehouses, setting fields on fire, the freedom fighters demolished some one thousand plantations—and that was just in the first two months of their revolution. The fight against sugar and chains soon had a leader, Toussaint, who called himself "L’Ouverture"—the opening. Toussaint was making a space, an opening, for people to be free. How do the authors use historical evidence to support their claim in this passage?
Read the passage from Sugar Changed the World . Knowing that their slaves were likely to die by the time they reached their thirties, Louisiana sugar planters were extremely selective—they bought only healthy-looking young men in their late teens. On average, the men purchased in Louisiana were an inch taller than the people bought in the other slave states. Those teenagers made up seven to eight out of every ten slaves brought to America's sugar Hell. The others were younger teenage girls, around fifteen to sixteen years old. Their job, for the rest of their short lives, was to have children. Elizabeth Ross Hite knew that, for sure, "all de master wanted was fo' dem wimmen to hav children." Enslaved children would be put to work or sold. The overseer S.B. Raby explained, "Rachel had a 'fine boy' last Sunday. Our crop of negroes will I think make up any deficiencies there may be in the cane crop." That is, a master could sell any slaves who managed to live, if he needed more money than he could make from sugar. Jazz was born in Louisiana. Could it be that a population of teenagers, almost all of them male, were inspired to develop their own music as a way to speak, to compete, to announce who they were to the world? Bomba in Puerto Rico, Maculelê in Brazil, jazz in Louisiana—all gave people a chance to be alive, to be human, to have ideas, and dreams, and passions when their owners claimed they were just cogs in machinery built to produce sugar. How do the authors use historical evidence to support their claim in this passage?
Read the passage from Sugar Changed the World . Slave owners fought back, arguing that owners should be able to list their slaves as property when they arrived in France and take them with them when they left. Though most parts of France agreed to this, law–makers in Paris hesitated. Pierre Lemerre the Younger made the case for the slaves. "All men are equal," he insisted in 1716—exactly sixty years before the Declaration of Independence. To say that "all men are equal" in 1716, when slavery was flourishing in every corner of the world and most eastern Europeans themselves were farmers who could be sold along with the land they worked, was like announcing that there was a new sun in the sky. In the Age of Sugar, when slavery was more brutal than ever before, the idea that all humans are equal began to spread—toppling kings, overturning governments, transforming the entire world. Sugar was the connection, the tie, between slavery and freedom. In order to create sugar, Europeans and colonists in the Americas destroyed Africans, turned them into objects. Just at that very same moment, Europeans—at home and across the Atlantic—decided that they could no longer stand being objects themselves. They each needed to vote, to speak out, to challenge the rules of crowned kings and royal princes. How could that be? Why did people keep speaking of equality while profiting from slaves? In fact, the global hunger for slave-grown sugar led directly to the end of slavery. Following the strand of sugar and slavery leads directly into the tumult of the Age of Revolutions. For in North America, then England, France, Haiti, and once again North America, the Age of Sugar brought about the great, final clash between freedom and slavery. Which excerpt from the passage best states the authors' claim?
Read the passage from Sugar Changed the World . The English public, now consuming some eighteen pounds of sugar a year, knew little about the lives of the enslaved Africans whose labor sweetened their meals. Worse yet, every Englishman who hammered the wood, sewed the sails, manufactured the rope for slave ships, or built the barrels to hold slave-harvested sugar made his money from the slave trade. The English were getting richer because Africans were being turned into property. Clarkson and others who believed as he did, who in the coming decades would be called abolitionists, realized that while that link gave the English a stake in slavery, it also gave the antislavery forces an opportunity. If they could reverse the flow—make the horrors of slavery visible to those who benefited from it—they might be able to end the vile practice forever. The abolitionists were brilliant. They created the most effective public relations campaign in history, inventing techniques that we use to this day. When he spoke, Clarkson brandished whips and handcuffs used on slaves; he published testimonials from sailors and ship doctors who described the atrocities and punishments on slave ships. When Olaudah Equiano published his memoir, he educated his readers about the horrors of the slave trade. And then, when the English began to understand what slavery really was, Clarkson and others organized what we would call a boycott of "the blood-sweetened beverage." Which excerpt from the passage best states the authors' claim?
Read the passage from Sugar Changed the World . In France, there was no Parliament or Congress; no one expected to be able to protect his rights by voting. But even in the land of King Louis XVI and Queen Marie Antoinette, the people demanded to be heard. In July 1789, Parisians stormed the Bastille, the hated prison where the king locked up anyone he disliked. And in August, the newly defined National Assembly issued the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen. "Men are born and remain free and equal in rights,” it announced to the world. Here it was again, Pierre Lemerre’s phrase, Jefferson’s phrase, the principle Clarkson was fighting for—indeed, he came to France to support the new government. And yet the Declaration also said that "property is an inviolable and sacred right.” So what were slaves? Equal human beings, or goods that belonged to their owners? Human rights versus property rights. That argument goes on today as, for example, we debate how closely to regulate coal mining. Is it best to let owners set rules, which is likely to give all of us cheaper coal, or to have the government set standards, which is more likely to protect workers and the environment? In France, one side argued that slaves must be freed. The other said that to change anything in the sugar islands would invite slave revolts, help France's rivals, and thus hurt the nation. Which historical events do the authors include to support the claim in this passage? Choose two correct answers.
Read the passage from Sugar Changed the World . In 1733, Parliament ruled that an extra six cents must be added to the price of every gallon of molasses that did not come from an English source. If the colonists actually followed the rules of the Molasses Act, it would have terrible consequences. Molasses from French islands would now be too expensive—merchants could never make a profit. So they would have to turn to the English, who would surely raise their prices. This one law could cripple the entire North American trade with the sugar islands—if, that is, the colonists or the French followed the rules. But of course they did just the opposite. The Molasses Act accomplished nothing except to make Americans better smugglers. Yet the act was renewed again and again—until the crucial year of 1763. Just as the Molasses Act was due to expire, England completed its victory over France in the global contest known as the Seven Years’ War (the segment of that war fought in North America is often called the French and Indian War). To pay for the war, the prime minister decided to put some teeth into the legislation. Now called the Sugar Act, the law was designed to make sure the American colonists stopped smuggling and paid their sugar tax. Which details do the authors include to support the claim in this passage? Choose three correct answers.
Read the passage from Sugar Changed the World . With their victory, the people of Saint Domingue announced that the conflict between freedom and property was over: "All men are equal" meant that no men are property. This idea terrified the English—and not merely because their sugar island of Jamaica was just over a hundred miles across the water from Saint Domingue. Indeed, slaves in Jamaica were beginning to sing a new song while they worked: One, two, tree, All de same; Black, white, brown, All de same; All de same. One, two, tree, All de same! That chant did more than threaten a slave revolt—it was a challenge to all ranking hierarchies. Jamaica had already seen many slave revolts, and the reverend John Lindsay was certain that the talk of freedom and liberty in North America had inspired the slaves: "At our tables (where . . . every Person has his own waiting man behind him) we have I am afraid been too careless of Expressions, especially when the topic of American rebellion has been . . . brandished with strains of Virtuous Heroism.” But the slaves did not need to overhear their masters to learn about the ideas of equality. Black sailors working ships running all through the islands were carrying the word. And if this spirit of liberty got out of hand, that could be really dangerous. After all, in England itself only 3 percent of the population had the right to vote. If this expanded idea of freedom spread, how safe were the kings and dukes, earls and knights, of England? Starting in fall 1793, British troops began arriving in Saint Domingue to reenslave people and return them to their sugar plantations. As Henry Dundas, the British secretary of war, put it, their goal was to "prevent a circulation in the British Colonies of the wild and pernicious Doctrines of Liberty and Equality.” How do the authors use historical evidence to support their claim? Choose two correct answers.
Read the passage from Sugar Changed the World . The leaders of the American Revolution kept close watch as the former slaves fought for their freedom in Haiti. But that fight split the Founding Fathers—who had their own conflicts about how to deal with slavery in the new United States. When John Adams was president, he sent guns and supplies to Toussaint to help in the struggle against the French. Thomas Jefferson, though, was terrified by the success of the Haitian revolution. When Thomas Jefferson succeeded Adams, he saw Haiti only as a threat. He expected ex-slaves from the island to spread into America, preaching freedom and rebellion to the slaves. "Unless something is done," he warned, "and soon done, we shall be the murderers of our own children . . . ; the revolutionary storm now sweeping the globe will be upon us." So he refused to recognize Haiti—America's only sister republic. In fact, it was not until 1862 that Abraham Lincoln, about to issue the Emancipation Proclamation, finally established relations with Haiti. Americans like Jefferson were proud of having fought for their freedom. But as long as they could still see Africans as property, they could not treat Haitians as equally brave and courageous human beings. For if Haitians could claim their freedom and be recognized by America, why couldn't slaves within the United States do the same thing? In this passage, how do the authors use historical details to support the claim that US political leaders’ positions on slavery impacted the relations between the United States and Haiti? Choose three correct answers.
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