Sugar, Hardship, and Aftermath of Slavery

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Colonial slavery was not a monolithic institution: sugarcane plantations were deadlier and more violent than coffee or cotton plantations. How did heterogeneity in the experience of slavery shape post-emancipation immediate disadvantages? Using a novel, individual-level dataset covering the universe of formerly enslaved people in the French West Indies immediately after emancipation in 1848, I follow two generations into freedom and explore how within-slavery heterogeneity in exposure to sugarcane affected intergenerational outcomes. I exploit a unique institutional feature of distinctive surname giving at emancipation to link families to their former parish of enslavement. Sugarcane exposure generated two opposing forces: economic advantages through skill acquisition, but worse intergenerational health through non-economic channels. Children born free whose fathers were enslaved in the most sugarcane-intensive parishes face a 40% higher risk of death before age five. This effect is concentrated when fathers are physically present, and best explained by negative paternal inputs rather than absent ones. Exploiting within-parish, across-cohort variation in parents' exposure to hardship when enslaved, I show these intergenerational effects stem from past experience of extreme hardship. Criminal records confirm that men from extreme sugarcane parishes were disproportionately convicted for violence against women and children.