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Once seen as a luxurious drug, it was now a necessity, the cash crop of the empire.
糖曾被视为珍稀药物，现已成为必需品，是帝国的经济作物。
Barbados provided the perfect habitat to grow the sugar cane -- tropical heat and saturating rains.
巴巴多斯极为适合甘蔗的生长，拥有热带气候且降水充沛。
So the British began to settle in the West Indies, transforming virgin forest into a patchwork quilt of sugar plantations.
于是英国人开始在西印度群岛定居，将原始雨林打造成甘蔗种植基地。
But Queen Sugar was a bitch, demanding absolute service before she'd spill her bounty.
但甘蔗可不好伺候，需要悉心照料才能获得产出。
She took 14 months to get ripe, all eight feet of her. But when she was ready, she was ready.
完全成熟需14个月能长到2.4米高。收割还要迅速。
Cut the cane at once, get it to the crushers before it spoiled.
迅速砍下杆子，在它变质前绞碎。
Boil the juice before it degraded. All very messy and all very dangerous.
还要在糖分降解前煮开。过程既麻烦又危险。
By the side of the crushing mills hung a sharpened machete, ready to sever the limbs of anyone who got caught in the rollers.
在碾压机边上挂着把大砍刀，被机器卷进去的人都会直接被砍断手脚。
What she needed was a combination of strength and lightning speed. What she needed were human beasts of burden, strong, quick, durable and uncomplaining.
制糖需要的是力气大且动作迅速。需要的是些如牲畜一般，强壮、敏捷、任劳任怨的人。
One commodity would be reaped by another. By slaves.
一种商品被另外一种商品收割。这种商品叫作奴隶。
Sitting in a grand plantation house next to mills to turn sugar into liquid gold, what did you care if you had to go to West Africa to buy the slaves and ship them back across the Atlantic?
于磨坊边种植园的豪宅里坐等液体黄金出炉的富人们，又怎会在乎去西非买些奴隶，再将他们运到大西洋彼岸？
Oh, yes, the logistics were difficult. But nothing the greatest seafaring nation in the world couldn't handle.
物流确实挺难保障的。但这难不倒英国这个杰出的海洋国家。
The British were good at commodities.
英国人对大宗买卖得心应手。
A couple of thousand pounds bought you 200 acres of Barbadian cane fields, a mill and a 100-odd slaves.
用数千英镑就可在巴巴多斯买到200英亩的甘蔗种植地，以及一个磨坊和百余名奴隶。
And within a few years, it returned an equal amount every year for the rest of your life.
用不了多少年，你终生都能坐收同等数量的收益。
You were now among the richest men anywhere in the British Empire.
你已经跻身英帝国的富人行列了。
The slave economy in the Caribbean wasn't just a side-show of empire, it was the empire.
加勒比地区的奴隶经济不只是帝国的冰山一角，它就代表了整个帝国。
Three and half million slaves were transported in British ships alone. They went to British plantations, to make British profits and build British cities.
单英籍船只就贩卖了350万奴隶。他们驶向英国的种植园，为英国人挣钱，为英国城市奠基。
