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Slavery

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France and England established sugar colonies at virtually the same time in the Caribbean, at the start of the second quarter of the 17th century (Dunn, 1972). For the most part, their management strategies, agricultural methods, and technological innovations were relatively uniform (Goodwin, 1987). After brief stints growing tobacco and other produce, sugar soon became the dominant crop, especially on the British islands, which had developed into a true monoculture by the 18th century. Britain’s main sugar colonies were Jamaica, Barbados, Antigua, and St. Kitts. Many other islands. St. Vincent, St. Lucia, Dominica, Grenada, and Tobago changed hands frequently between the two powers, especially during the numerous wars and treaties of the 18th century. In the early years, Britain and France competed fiercely for the European market, but around 1740, France successfully took it over due to their cheaper prices (Mintz 1985: 39; Rogoziński 1992: 108).
British sugar colonies were characterized by large self-contained plantations worked by enslaved Africans. In the 17th century, 100 slaves working 80 acres of cane could produce 80 tons of sugar a year (Dunn 1972: 191). Many poor white colonists who did not have the capital to invest in planting were absorbed into the plantation system as clerks, tradesmen, or overseers. The owner, if he lived on the plantation (absenteeism was quite common), typically lived in a great house that mimicked the style of the gentry back in the metropole. The sugar planter was a large scale entrepreneur, at the same time a farmer and an industrialist who had the potential to amass huge profits at the expense of brutal human suffering.

The British invasion of the Caribbean fell into three major phases: the second and third quarters of the seventeenth century, the 1760s, and the nineteenth century. The first phase saw the

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