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Sugarcane Plantation System
An Atlantic-world economic model centered on monocrop sugarcane (Saccharum officinarum) fields, forced slave or indentured labor, and integrated crus…
Timeline
- c. 1550–1630Pernambuco, Brazil · BrazilPortuguese colonists established large-scale sugarcane cultivation and sugar mills in Brazil based on African slave labor, forming an early closed loop of plantation-port-European market.
- 1641–1650Barbados and the Leeward Islands · Lesser AntillesIn the 1640s, Barbados land shifted to sugarcane monoculture; English planters introduced crushing technology and slave labor, sugar exports surged, spawning the "Sugar Revolution" and spreading the plantation model to the Leeward Islands.
- c. 1645–1700French Saint-Domingue and Dutch Curaçao · Greater AntillesThe Dutch West Indian Company and French colonists replicated the sugarcane plantation system in Hispaniola, Guiana, and elsewhere, competing in Atlantic trade with refined sugar and rum.
Sources
- Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History — Sidney W. Mintz (1985)
- Sugar — History of cultivation https://www.britannica.com/topic/sugar