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Caribbean Islands THE COLONIAL PERIOD
Evolution around the middle of the seventeenth century of a
sugar plantation society based on slave labor was an important
watershed in Caribbean history. Introduced by the Dutch when they
were expelled from Brazil in 1640, the sugar plantation system
arrived at an opportune time for the fledgling non-Spanish
colonists with their precarious economies. The English yeoman
farming economy based mainly on cultivation of tobacco was facing
a severe crisis. Caribbean tobacco could compete neither in quality
nor in quantity with that produced in the mid-Atlantic colonies.
Because tobacco farming had been basis of the economy, its end
threatened the economic viability of the islands. As a result, the
colonies were losing population to the mainland. Economic salvation
came from what has been called in historical literature the
Caribbean "sugar revolutions," a series of interrelated changes
that altered the entire agriculture, demography, society, and
culture of the Caribbean, thereby transforming the political and
economic importance of the region.
In terms of agriculture, the islands changed from small farms
producing cash crops of tobacco and cotton with the labor of a few
servants and slaves--often indistinguishable--to large plantations
requiring vast expanses of land and enormous capital outlays to
create sugarcane fields and factories. Sugar, which had become
increasingly popular on the European market throughout the
seventeenth century, provided an efficacious balance between bulk
and value--a relationship of great importance in the days of
relatively small sailing ships and distant sea voyages. Hence, the
conversion to sugar transformed the landholding pattern of the
islands.
The case of Barbados illustrates the point. In 1640 this island
of 430 square kilometers had about 10,000 settlers, predominantly
white; 764 of them owned 4 or more hectares of land, and virtually
every white was a landholder. By 1680, when the sugar revolution
was underway, the wealthiest 175 planters owned 54 percent of the
land and an equal proportion of the servants and slaves. More
important, Barbados had a population of about 38,000 African slaves
and more than 2,000 English servants who owned no land. Fortunes,
however, depended on access to land and slaves. Thomas Rous, who
arrived in Barbados in 1638, had a farm of 24 hectares in 1645. By
1680 the Rous family owned 3 sugar works, 266 hectares of land, and
310 slaves and were counted among the great planters of the island.
Data as of November 1987
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