Sugar plantations in the Caribbean were a major part of the economy of Caribbean islands in the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries. Most islands were covered with sugarcane fields and mills for refining the crop. The main source of labor, until the abolition of chattel slavery, was enslaved Africans. After the abolition of slavery, indentured laborers from India, China, Portugal and other places were brought to the Caribbean to work in the sugar industry. The plantations produced 80 to 90 percent of the sugar consumed in Western Europe, later supplanted by European-grown sugar beet.
Sugar trade
Sugar cane development in the Americas The Portuguese introduced sugar plantations in the 1550s off the coast of their Brazilian settlement colony, at Engenho dos Erasmos, located on the island of Sao Vincente. As the Portuguese and Spanish maintained a strong colonial presence in the Caribbean, the Iberian Peninsula amassed tremendous wealth from the cultivation of this cash crop. As other imperial states observed the economic boom catalyzed by the plantation system, they began colonizing the remaining American territories, hoping to capitalize on the lucrative cultivation and trade of natural resources. Sugar was the most important crop throughout the Caribbean, although other crops such as coffee, indigo, and rice were also grown. Sugarcane was best grown on relatively flat land near coastal waters, where the soil was naturally yellow and fertile; mountainous parts of the islands were less likely to be used for cane cultivation. The coastal placement of commercial ports gave imperial states a geographic advantage in shipping crops throughout the transatlantic world. Sugar created a unique political ecology—the relationship between labor, profits, and ecological consequences—in the Caribbean. Imperial powers forcefully displaced West African peoples to cultivate sugar using slave labor. Imperial conflicts arose in the Caribbean trying for political and economic control. For example, conflicts among the English, Spanish, French, Dutch, and various indigenous peoples manifested for territorial gain; regarding the region's political ecology, these European states exploited the environment's resources to such an extent that sugar production stagnated. Due to the loss of trees, needed for timber in the sugar refinement process, European imperial powers began competing and fighting over the Caribbean during the middle 17th century. This process would not have been possible without the invention of windmills to produce sugar more efficiently. Following European settlers' entry into the Caribbean world, massive demographic changes occurred. Indigenous populations began dying at unprecedented rates with the influx of old-world diseases brought by colonists. Estimates of these population losses vary from 8.4 million to 112.5 million. This extreme decrease in native population numbers allowed greater opportunities for plantation construction and lessened the conflicts between Europeans and indigenous peoples.
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