These two ceramics made for the abolitionist market make their point through words rather than pictures. The blue sugar bowl implicitly advocates the boycott of slave-produced sugar from the West Indies (or Caribbean Islands) by announcing its contents to be imported from the East Indies (Asia). The bowl may even have been made by the British East India Company itself, in an early example of politically expedient advertising. Ironically, the company relied for its sugar supply on overworked Indian laborers, whose living conditions were only somewhat better than those of the Caribbean slaves.

Sugar also lay at the heart of Toussaint L’Ouverture’s story. During the Haitian revolution most of the island’s plantations were destroyed in what one observer described as "a rain of fire composed of burning cane straw." But after the revolt Toussaint worked hard to restore the profitable industry of sugar production as a means of supporting his new independent government.