Expansion of Jamaica's Sugar Plantations

Name: Expansion of Jamaica's Sugar Plantations
Start: 1660
End: 1669

Type Event Region Jamaica Time 1660–1669

In the 1660s, after occupying Jamaica, England quickly shifted the island's economy to large-scale sugar plantations, importing African slave labor a…

Timeline

1660–1665Jamaica's plains and coastal areas · JamaicaBritish colonists and speculators bought up land, shifting existing small-scale tobacco and indigo production to highly profitable sugar cultivation, forming a large-estate economic pattern.
1665–1669Kingston and southern Jamaica · JamaicaLarge numbers of African slaves were imported through ports such as Kingston; plantation owners invested in water- and animal-powered sugar works, and sugar exports grew markedly, making Jamaica the core of the British Caribbean sugar industry.

Sources

Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History — Sidney W. Mintz (1985)