Caribbean Sugarcane Plantation System

Timeline

1. c. 1640–1660Barbados · BarbadosBarbados shifted from tobacco to sugarcane, introducing Dutch sugar technology and African slave labor, forming the first highly specialized sugarcane-sugar export economy and providing a replicable plantation template for the other Caribbean islands.
2. 1661–1670Jamaica · JamaicaBritish Jamaica and the French islands successively replicated the Barbados model; sugarcane acreage surged, and the transatlantic slave trade reached a staged peak in the 1660s, with plantations becoming the core organizational form of the Caribbean colonial economy.
3. 1700–1800French Saint-Domingue (present-day Haiti) · HispaniolaSaint-Domingue became the world's largest sugar exporter, and the plantation-sugar mill complex grew ever more capital-intensive; the sugarcane plantation system became a key pillar of Europe's consumer revolution and colonial empires' wealth accumulation.