Barbados sugar revolution (slave plantation)
Revolución azucarera de Barbados (plantación esclavista)
- Date
- c. 1640-1655 · confidence medium
- Place
- Island of Barbados, Barbados
- Credited to
- English planters (such as James Drax) with techniques transferred from Dutch Brazil
- Field
- Life & health
⚠️ Disputed: the sources disagree.
What it is
Between 1640 and 1655 English settlers in Barbados replaced tobacco and cotton with sugar cane on large plantations with windmills and enslaved African labour on a large scale. Barbados became one of the richest colonies of the English empire and the model for Caribbean plantations.
The role of the Dutch and the Sephardic Jews of Pernambuco in transferring the technique is debated (Ligon, 1657, describes the new economy). The dates are a transition range.
What it led to
- sugar plantations in Jamaica, Saint-Domingue and the Carolinas following the Barbadian model
- a massive increase in the trade in enslaved Africans
- sugar fortunes and rum distillation