Image
Description
This photograph from 1906 shows local inhabitants, including children, working to dry cocoa beans in Dominica. The island, located in the Caribbean Sea, was a British colony in the West Indies at the time. The British used Dominica in the 1800s as part of the transatlantic slave trade, by which enslaved people were imported and sold as labor in the islands as part of a trade that also included producing and shipping sugar and coffee as commodity crops to Europe.
Source-Dependent Questions
- The photo shows cocoa beans drying in Dominica, a colony at the time of the British West Indies. Why do you suppose Britain got cocoa beans from Dominica instead of growing it locally? Explain.
- Compare this photo to Trinidadians sorting cocoa pods. What is similar between the photos? What's different?
- How do these photos help to illustrate the conditions of the workers? And how do these photos help illustrate the unseen side of cocoa production and trade?
Citation Information
"Drying cocoa, one of the industries of Dominica, [British] West Indies [one of the Windward Islands]," ca. 1906. Courtesy of Library of Congress