The sugar revolutions are both cause and consequence of the demographic revolution.

Sugar production requires a greater labor supply than is available through the importation of European servants and irregularly supplied enslaved Africans.

At first the Dutch supply the slaves, as well as the credit, capital, technological expertise, and marketing arrangements.

After the restoration of the English monarchy following the Commonwealth (1649-60), the king and other members of the royal family invest in the Company of Royal Adventurers, chartered in 1663, to pursue the lucrative trade in enslaved Africans.

This company is succeeded by the Royal Africa Company in 1672, but the supply still fails to meet the demand, and all kinds of private traders entered the transatlantic commerce.

Eastern West Indies (1540–1683 CE): Consolidation, Resistance, and Maritime Corridors

Geographic & Environmental Context

The subregion of Eastern West Indies includes Trinidad, Saint Lucia, Barbados, most of Haiti, most of the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands. Anchors included the Orinoco–Trinidad seaway, the Cordillera Central of Hispaniola, the karst valleys of Puerto Rico, and the volcanic arc from Saint Lucia through the northern Lesser Antilles. Coral reefs, fertile valleys, and hurricane-exposed coasts structured settlement and strategy.

Climate & Environmental Shifts

The Little Ice Age persisted with cooler decades and heightened hurricane frequency (notably mid-1600s). Drought cycles struck leeward islands; windward slopes on volcanic islands retained higher rainfall. Floods alternated with dry spells on Hispaniola’s north, shaping ranching and smallholder agriculture.

Subsistence & Settlement

• Spanish Hispaniola and Puerto Rico: After demographic collapse, Spanish society reorganized around cattle hatós (ranches), small farms, and coastal towns. Enslaved Africans and their descendants worked ranches, mines (declining), and ports; free Afro-descended communities grew in rural zones.

• Trinidad & the Lesser Antilles: Kalinago (Carib) communities maintained shifting cultivation, fishing, and canoe raiding/trading networks; Spanish footholds remained tenuous outside main towns.

• Barbados (from 1627, English): Rapid plantation shift to sugar with enslaved African labor; small farms gave way to estates, and the island became a key English sugar hub.

• Virgin Islands & northern Lesser Antilles: Intermittent Spanish presence met rising French and English settlements (mid-17th century), while Kalinago resistance persisted from strongholds on mountainous isles.

Technology & Material Culture

Spanish towns displayed masonry churches, plazas, and coastal forts; ranching technologies (lasso, corral, brand) dominated Hispaniola’s interior. English Barbados installed wind-powered sugar mills, boiling houses, and curing facilities; plantation house forms and stone/brick windmills dotted ridges. Afro-Caribbean craft, music, and cuisine expanded—ironwork, basketry, drum traditions—blending with European and surviving Taíno elements. Kalinago weaponry (bow, lance) and seaworthy canoes underpinned mobility and defense.

Movement & Interaction Corridors

• Treasure-fleet and convoy routes funneled through the Windward Passage and past Puerto Rico; Havana remained the principal rally point, but Hispaniola’s north and Puerto Rico supplied cattle, hides, and timber.

• Barbados–England–North America circuits exported sugar and imported provisions, enslaved people, and equipment.

• Kalinago canoe corridors linked Saint Lucia, Dominica, Guadeloupe, and the Virgin Islands for trade/raids, intercepting colonial shipping.

• Smuggling networks connected Hispaniola’s north with Tortuga and Saint-Domingue (French) for hides, tobacco, and textiles.

Cultural & Symbolic Expressions

Spanish Catholicism structured public ritual on Hispaniola and Puerto Rico, while Afro-descended confraternities and cabildos nurtured mutual aid and syncretic devotion. On Barbados, Anglican worship anchored planters’ identity; African ritual life persisted covertly in quarters and nighttime gatherings. Kalinago spirituality—ancestor veneration, warrior rites, and healing—remained central to island autonomy. Music, drum/dance, and festival cycles expressed memory and power across all societies.

Environmental Adaptation & Resilience

Hurricane rebuilding fostered stone foundations, buttressed churches, and wind-smart siting. On Hispaniola, mixed herding–cropping buffered drought; free and enslaved Afro-descended farmers sustained provision grounds (cassava, plantains, yams). Barbados shifted soils under cane; provision plots and inter-island provisioning mitigated food shortfalls. Kalinago mobility and upland refuges enabled long resistance amid encroaching colonies.

Transition

By 1683 CE, the Eastern West Indies had polarized: Spanish Hispaniola and Puerto Rico stabilized as provisioning and ranching nodes; Barbados rose as England’s sugar powerhouse; Kalinago strongholds still contested the Lesser Antilles even as French and English settlements multiplied. The subregion’s future would pivot on sugar-driven slavery, imperial rivalry, and the endurance of Afro-Caribbean and Indigenous lifeways.

Sugar prices rise in Europe, but Brazilian planters cannot respond and permanently lose their leading market position.

The Dutch and English set up plantations in Suriname and Barbados, taking advantage of the techniques developed in Brazil and their better access to capital, merchant fleets, and the northern European market.

There will be years of recovery (1665-80, 1698-1710), but sugar is no longer the foundation of the Brazilian economy.

Northeastern Brazil enters into a long stagnation, and Portugal, which now depends heavily on Brazil after its losses to the Dutch in the East Indies, watches its economy deteriorate.

An expedition sent out by Oliver Cromwell under Admiral William Penn (the father of the founder of Pennsylvania) and General Robert Venables in 1655 seize Jamaica, the first territory captured from the Spanish. (Trinidad, the only other British colony taken from the Spanish, will fall in 1797 and will be ceded in 1802.)

Jamaica at this time as a population of about three thousand, equally divided between Spaniards and their slaves—the native population having been eliminated.

Although Jamaica is a disappointing consolation for the failure to capture either of the major colonies of Hispaniola or Cuba, the island is retained in the Treaty of Madrid in 1670, thereby more than doubling the land area for potential English colonization in the Caribbean.

Jamaica will be the most important of Britain's Caribbean colonies by 1750, having eclipsed Barbados in economic significance.

Eastern West Indies (1624–1635 CE): Rival Empires and New Settlements

Geopolitical Shifts in the Caribbean

Conditions became increasingly favorable for European colonial exploits in the Eastern West Indies during this period due to Spain’s preoccupation with the Thirty Years' War (1618–1648) in Europe. Exploiting this vulnerability, other European powers—particularly the Dutch, English, and French—expanded aggressively into previously uncontested Spanish territories.

Dutch Expansion and Trade

Beginning in 1621, the Dutch aggressively challenged Spanish hegemony in the Americas, notably in Brazil(temporarily under Spanish control from 1580 to 1640). By 1625, the Dutch had established settlements in the Leeward Islands, specifically Sint Eustatius, Sint Maarten (part of the divided island of Saint Martin/Sint Maarten), and Saba, along with the strategically valuable island of Curaçao, off the Venezuelan coast. These territories significantly expanded the Dutch presence beyond their existing holdings in the Guianas and along the Venezuelan coast at Araya and Cumana.

The Dutch also facilitated the spread of sugarcane cultivation throughout the Caribbean after 1625, carrying this valuable crop from South America to their Caribbean territories. Sugar rapidly became one of the region’s most valuable commodities, frequently compared in worth to musk, pearls, and spices. The Dutch West India Company’s holdings in the Virgin Islands, known collectively as the Dutch Virgin Islands, became notable centers for sugar production.

English and French Colonization Efforts

Simultaneously, the English and French moved swiftly to capitalize on Spain's distractions. The English successfully established a colony on Barbados in 1625 and made an unsuccessful attempt to settle Tobago. Expanding their territorial foothold, they occupied Nevis in 1628, followed by Antigua and Montserrat in 1632. An English effort to colonize St. Lucia initially begun in 1605 had failed due to strong resistance by the indigenous Kalinago. Another attempt in 1638 also proved unsuccessful.

Conflict and Cooperation on St. Kitts

Saint Christopher Island (St. Kitts) became a focal point of European rivalry. While initial contacts dated back to Columbus and a short-lived French Huguenot settlement in 1538, permanent colonization began in earnest with an English settlement in 1623, followed closely by the French in 1625. The two European powers briefly united in 1626 to preemptively massacre the local Kalinago inhabitants, thwarting a planned Kalinago attack. After this brutal event, the English and French partitioned the island, with the English holding the central region and the French controlling the northern and southern portions.

Long-term Implications

This era marked a decisive shift from a primarily Spanish-controlled Caribbean toward a more fragmented region characterized by multiple competing European powers. The rapid expansion of sugar plantations began reshaping the economic landscape, setting the stage for increased importation of African slaves and profoundly influencing the cultural and social development of the Eastern West Indies.

The English and the French also move rapidly to take advantage of Spanish weakness in the Americas and overcommitment in Europe.

The English settle Barbados in 1625 and try an unsuccessful settlement on Tobago.

They take possession of Nevis in 1628 and Antigua and Montserrat in 1632.

They establish a colony on St. Lucia in 1605, but it is destroyed by the Caribs; they try again in 1638 to establish a colony but are again unsuccessful.

The Dutch carry sugarcane after 1625 from South America to the Caribbean islands, where it is grown from Barbados to ...

...the Dutch Virgin Islands, the collective name for the enclaves that the Dutch West India Company has in the Virgin Islands.

Contemporaries often compare the worth of sugar with valuable commodities including musk, pearls, and spices.

England establishes additional Caribbean settlements, notably in Barbados in 1625.

The British had found an island uninhabited when they first arrived in 1625 and claimed it in the name of King James I of England.

This first ship, which had arrived on May 14, was captained by John Powell.

The first settlement lands some time later on February 17, 1627, near what is now Holetown (formerly Jamestown).

The group is led by Captain Powell, who arrives with eighty settlers and ten slaves—these first ten slaves are among the English or Irish youth sometimes kidnapped and other times runaway.

This settlement is funded by Sir William Courteen, a London merchant who owns the title to Barbados and several other unclaimed islands.

Thus, the first colonists are actually tenants and the profits of their labor will return to Courteen and his company.

In the initial years of settlement, the majority of the population will remain white and male, with African slaves providing little of the workforce.

Cultivation of tobacco, cotton, ginger and indigo will be handled primarily by European indentured labor until the start of the sugar cane industry in the late 1630s.

Eastern West Indies (1636–1647 CE): Sugar Revolutions and Colonial Rivalries

Introduction of the Sugar Plantation Economy

The mid-seventeenth century marked a critical turning point for the Eastern West Indies as the sugar plantation economy, reliant on enslaved labor, was introduced by the Dutch following their expulsion from Brazil in 1640. This economic transformation could not have come at a more crucial time for English and French colonists, whose precarious agricultural economies—previously dependent largely on tobacco—were increasingly threatened by competition from the mainland colonies.

Caribbean tobacco struggled to compete with superior products from the mid-Atlantic colonies, prompting severe economic strain and population decline as settlers migrated to more profitable regions. However, the introduction of the sugar plantation system revitalized the colonial economies, ushering in the period known historically as the "Caribbean Sugar Revolutions." These interrelated agricultural, demographic, social, and economic changes dramatically reshaped the Caribbean, significantly elevating its global economic and political importance.

Expansion of European Plantations and Slave Labor

The adoption of the sugar plantation model by the English and French was directly influenced by the Portuguese experiences in Brazil, while the Dutch provided the crucial infrastructure for the rapidly growing sugar industry through their well-established networks. The Dutch West India Company supplied the necessary enslaved West African laborers, accelerating the region’s demographic transformation. Tens of thousands of Africans were forcibly brought into the Eastern West Indies, profoundly reshaping its social and cultural landscape.

French Colonial Expansion

Under the auspices of the French West India Company, chartered by Cardinal Richelieu in 1635, the French successfully expanded their Caribbean presence. They established strongholds on Martinique and Guadeloupe, from which they would later spread to St. Barthelemy, St. Martin, Grenada, St. Lucia, and the western part of Hispaniola, which Spain formally ceded to France by the Treaty of Ryswick in 1697.

The Arrival of Yellow Fever

This era also witnessed the devastating introduction of yellow fever, first definitively recorded in the New World on the island of Barbados in 1647. The virus, originating from Africa, was likely brought to the Caribbean through the Columbian Exchange, along with its mosquito vector, Aedes aegypti, by enslaved Africans. Unlike the African populations who had developed some immunity, European colonists suffered high mortality rates, significantly impacting colonial societies and economies.

Conclusion

The era from 1636 to 1647 marked profound changes in the Eastern West Indies, setting enduring patterns of agricultural production, labor exploitation, and demographic transformation. The establishment of sugar plantations laid a new economic foundation, making the Caribbean a strategically crucial region for competing European empires and marking the beginning of its long-term dependence on enslaved African labor.