Governance, value-added and rents in plantation slavery-based value-chains

Abstract

This article studies how the governance of a colonial valuechain impacted upon the value-added created. The article focuses on the value-chain of colonial sugar produced in the slave plantation complex in the Americas. Previous research has suggested that British planters in the Caribbean were able to reap high profits because of a protected market for sugar in Britain. In this paper, it is argued that it was mainly British refiners that were able to profit from these protectionist policies. Wholesale prices of muscovado sugar are shown to have been more or less on a par with those prevalent under free-market conditions, whereas the price of refined sugar was considerably higher in Britain than it presumably would have been in a freemarket. Limited competition and active collusion between refiners seem to have increased the markup on the refined sugar relative to the price of muscovado in Britain. Focusing only on the profitability on certain links in valuechains associated with the slave plantation complex in the Americas (most importantly the slave trade) might detract attention from how the governance structure of the valuechains allowed profits to be reaped elsewhere in the same value-chains.