The Sugar Duties Act 1846 (9 & 10 Vict) was a statute of the

United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the European mainland, continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotlan ...

which equalized

import duties A tariff is a tax imposed by the government of a country or by a supranational union on imports or exports of goods. Besides being a source of revenue for the government, import duties can also be a form of regulation of foreign trade and pol ...

for sugar from

British colonies A Crown colony or royal colony was a colony administered by The Crown within the British Empire. There was usually a Governor, appointed by the British monarch on the advice of the UK Government, with or without the assistance of a local Coun ...

. It was passed in 1846 at the same time as the repeal of the

Corn laws The Corn Laws were tariffs and other trade restrictions on imported food and corn enforced in the United Kingdom between 1815 and 1846. The word ''corn'' in British English denotes all cereal grains, including wheat, oats and barley. They wer ...

by the Importation Act 1846 (9 & 10 Vict. c. 22). The Act, combined with the recent

abolition of slavery Abolitionism, or the abolitionist movement, is the movement to end slavery. In Western Europe and the Americas, abolitionism was a historic movement that sought to end the Atlantic slave trade and liberate the enslaved people. The British ...

, had a devastating effect on the profits of the Caribbean

plantocracy A slavocracy, also known as a plantocracy, is a ruling class, political order or government composed of (or dominated by) slave owners and plantation owners. A number of early European colonies in the New World were largely plantocracies, usually ...

, which had previously enjoyed reduced import duties. There were in fact two Sugar Duties Acts in 1846 (c.41 and c.63), one being a replacement for the other. With no cheap labour force and no preferential tariff protection, the plantation-owners in the

British West Indies The British West Indies (BWI) were colonized British territories in the West Indies: Anguilla, the Cayman Islands, Turks and Caicos Islands, Montserrat, the British Virgin Islands, Antigua and Barbuda, The Bahamas, Barbados, Dominica, Grena ...

could not compete with

Cuba Cuba ( , ), officially the Republic of Cuba ( es, República de Cuba, links=no ), is an island country comprising the island of Cuba, as well as Isla de la Juventud and several minor archipelagos. Cuba is located where the northern Caribbea ...

and

Brazil Brazil ( pt, Brasil; ), officially the Federative Republic of Brazil (Portuguese: ), is the largest country in both South America and Latin America. At and with over 217 million people, Brazil is the world's fifth-largest country by area ...

, where sugar was still produced using slave labour. The rise of European sugar beet as a cheap alternative to sugarcane further worsened their position.

Plantation A plantation is an agricultural estate, generally centered on a plantation house, meant for farming that specializes in cash crops, usually mainly planted with a single crop, with perhaps ancillary areas for vegetables for eating and so on. The ...

owners in the West Indies felt betrayed by the legislation, as they had understood that the tariff protection would remain in place as a '' quid pro quo'' for their agreement to the abolition of slavery eight years earlier.

External links

Article relating to the passing of the Sugar Duties Act
1846 in law United Kingdom Acts of Parliament 1846 History of sugar Agriculture in the Caribbean Agriculture legislation in the United Kingdom {{UK-statute-stub