Atlantic Sugarcane Plantation

Timeline

1. 1425–1500Madeira Islands · MadeiraThe Portuguese established early sugarcane cultivation and sugar mills in Madeira and the Canary Islands, experimenting with slave labor and plantation land allocation, providing institutional and technical templates for transatlantic transplantation.
2. 1530–1550Pernambuco and Bahia, Brazil · BahiaPortuguese colonists established sesmaria large estates and engenho sugar mills along Brazil's northeast coast, using African slaves as the primary labor force; sugar became the colony's leading export commodity.
3. 1551–1560Atlantic sugar-producing regions · Lesser AntillesIn the 1550s Brazilian sugar exports surged while Spanish and Portuguese powers simultaneously promoted sugarcane cultivation in the West Indies; the plantation system and transatlantic slave trade formed a stable cycle, with sugar prices and labor demands driving the three-continent economy.
4. 1600Caribbean and Atlantic coasts · CubaIn the 17th–18th centuries the plantation model spread to Barbados, Jamaica, Haiti, and other islands, becoming the Atlantic world's most central form of coerced labor economy, until it gradually transformed after abolition in the 19th century.