Sugar, Hardship, and Aftermath of Slavery

Abstract

How heterogeneity in the experience of slavery affected immediate post-emancipation disadvantages remains unexplored. This paper uses a novel, individual-level dataset covering all formerly enslaved people in the French West Indies (Guadeloupe and Martinique) before and after emancipation in 1848, and a unique institutional feature - whereby surnames of formerly enslaved can be quasi-perfectly associated with former place of enslavement. Before emancipation, I show sugarcane plantations were deadlier and more violent than others. After abolition, the transition to freedom between 1852 and 1856 was marked by high within-island mobility, widespread paternal absence, and improvements in living conditions - but gains depended on prior sugarcane exposure. While past exposure to sugarcane conferred relative economic advantages through skill acquisition, it also led to poorer intergenerational health through two non-economic channels. First, higher paternal absence, itself associated with lower child survival after emancipation. Second, when fathers were previously enslaved in the most sugarcane intensive places, their presence is associated with systematically lower survival of their children after emancipation - even compared to absent fathers. I find suggestive evidence that this driven by paternal violence and child neglect. To understand mechanisms, I exploit parish-cohort variation in childhood mortality exposure when parents were enslaved and show these social consequences stem purely from hardship exposure, not other plantation characteristics.