between the 1660s and early 1730s. 41 As the colonies relied on imports for their
manufactured goods, there was an opportunity to diversify production beyond
traditional woollen cloths to produce other commodities such as copper, which grew in demand due to the increase in sugar cultivation in the West Indies. 42
Indeed, the Caribbean sugar sector supplied new markets for copper goods that
were used to grow and process sugar cane. In a boiling house, slaves loaded
bagasse in furnaces on the lower level while the liquor was stirred and skimmed in copper pans on the upper level. 43 The sugar was then ladled into another
copper to be boiled and concentrated, which was repeated once more in a
smaller copper vessel. The syrup was then decanted into the smallest copper to be granulated and later settled in coolers made of copper. 44 Evidently, the boiling
process required substantial amounts of copper. In 1790, for instance, a
consignment of two clarifiers and four taches weighing 1.9 tons were shipped
from Swansea to Jamaica by John Freeman & Co., which suggests that an
“average” copper was approximately 7.9 hundredweight. This means that the
32,148 coppers in the British Islands in 1770 would have weighed 12,285 tons,
totalling an excess of 15,400 if an additional 20 per cent allowance is given for other equipment such as coolers. 45
Other facets of the Atlantic sugar complex required copper too. Although
the refining process also used copper goods such as sugar pans, more notable
was the demand for distilling equipment. In the West Indies, planters profited by distilling molasses, the by-product of the boiling process. 46 There was an even
41 Nuala Zahedieh, ‘Colonies, Copper, and the Market for Inventive Activity in England and Wales, 1680 - 1730’, Economic History Review, 66.3 (2013), 805-825 (pp. 807-9). 42 Ralph Davis, ‘English Foreign Trade, 1660 - 1700’, Economic History Review, 7.2 (1954), 150-166 (p. 154) cited in Zahedieh, p. 807; and Zahedieh, p. 809. 43 Miskell and Evans, p. 24. 44 Ibid.
45 Ibid., pp. 24-5. 46 Ibid., pp. 25-6.
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