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willyb63 10 points ago +10 / -0

interesting fact; many many irish slaves died of malaria in the caribbean, but africans did not, and this led to the use of mostly african slaves for sugar cane farming. This resistance to Malaria is due to genetics and the same genes cause sickle cell disease today.

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DL535 4 points ago +4 / -0

Sugarcane was wildly profitable. There was some war where in the peace settlement, a European power had to choose between Canada and a small Caribbean island, and they chose the island, because you could use it for sugarcane, and canada was just a big, useless frozen wasteland. Developing sugar in the caribbean was like a big gold rush. It's not surprising at all that they were willing to use slaves to get more sugar.