European plantations require laws to regulate the plantation system and the many slaves imported to work on the plantations.

This legal control is the most oppressive for slaves inhabiting colonies where they outnumber their European masters and where rebellion is persistent, such as Jamaica.

During the early colonial period, rebellious slaves are harshly punished, with sentences including death by torture; less serious crimes such as assault, theft, or persistent escape attempts are commonly punished with mutilations, such as the cutting off of a hand or a foot.

Slaves can only be freed with the consent of their master under British rule,  and therefore freedom for slaves is rare.

British colonies are able to establish laws through their own legislatures, and the assent of the local island governor and the Crown.

British law considers slaves to be property, and thus does not recognize marriage for slaves, family rights, education for slaves, or the right to religious practices such as holidays.

British law denies all rights to freed slaves, with the exception of the right to a jury trial.

Otherwise, freed slaves have no right to own property, vote or hold office, or even enter some trades.

The development of agriculture in the Caribbean requires a large workforce of manual laborers, which the Europeans have found by taking advantage of the slave trade in Africa.

The Atlantic slave trade brings African slaves to British, Dutch, French, Portuguese and Spanish colonies in the Americas, including the Caribbean.

Slaves are brought to the Caribbean from the early sixteenth century until the end of the nineteenth century.

The majority of slaves are brought to the Caribbean colonies between 1701 and 1810.

Abolitionists in the Americas and in Europe become vocal opponents of the slave trade throughout the nineteenth century.

The importation of slaves to the colonies is often outlawed years before the end of the institution of slavery itself.

It is well into the nineteenth century before many slaves in the Caribbean will be legally free.

The trade in slaves is abolished in the British Empire through the Abolition of the Slave Trade Act in 1807.

Men, women and children who are already enslaved in the British Empire will remain slaves, however, until Britain passes the Slavery Abolition Act in 1833.

When the Slavery Abolition Act comes into force in 1834, roughly seven hundred thousand slaves in the British West Indies will immediately become free; other enslaved workers will be freed several years later after a period of forced apprenticeship.

Slavery is abolished in the Dutch Empire in 1814.

Spain abolishes slavery in its empire in 1811, with the exceptions of Cuba, Puerto Rico, and Santo Domingo; Spain ends the slave trade to these colonies in 1817, after being paid ₤400,000 by Britain.

Slavery itself will not be abolished in Cuba until 1886.

France will abolish slavery in its colonies in 1848.

The exploitation of the Caribbean landscape dates to the Spanish conquistadors starting in the 1490s, who had forced indigenous peoples held by Spanish settlers in encomienda to mine for gold.

The more significant development came when Christopher Columbus wrote back to Spain that the islands were made for sugar development.

The history of Caribbean agricultural dependency is closely linked with European colonialism. which alters the financial potential of the region by introducing a plantation system.

Much like the Spanish exploited indigenous labor to mine gold, the seventeenth century had brought a new series of oppressors in the form of the Dutch, the English, and the French.

By the middle of the eighteenth century sugar is Britain's largest import, which makes the Caribbean colonies that much more important.

Sugar, a luxury in Europe prior to the eighteenth century, becomes widely popular in the eighteenth century, then graduates to becoming a necessity in the nineteenth century

This evolution of taste and demand for sugar as an essential food ingredient unleashes major economic and social changes.

Caribbean islands with plentiful sunshine, abundant rainfalls and no extended frosts are well suited for sugarcane agriculture and sugar factories.

The French Empire regulates slaves under the Code Noir (Black Code), which is in force throughout the empire from 1685, but which is based upon French practices in the Caribbean colonies.

French law recognized slave marriages, but only with the consent of the master.

French law, like Spanish law, gives legal recognition to marriages between European men and black or Creole women.

French and Spanish laws are also significantly more lenient than British law in recognizing manumission, or the ability of a slave to purchase their freedom and become a "freeman".

Under French law, free slaves gain full rights to citizenship.

The French also extend limited legal rights to slaves, for example the right to own property, and the right to enter contracts.