the 1640sReputable sourceWell documented
Barbados and the Sugar Revolution
On the timeline · around the 1640s ·
What happened
English settlers reached Barbados in 1627 and at first grew tobacco and cotton. In the 1640s, learning sugar-making from the Dutch, planters turned the island into a vast sugar factory worked by enslaved Africans. Barbados became the richest colony in English America — the sugar capital of the Caribbean — and the model for a plantation system that spread across the West Indies.
Why it matters
The Barbados 'sugar revolution' created the brutal plantation-and-slavery model that would define Britain's Caribbean empire and pour immense wealth into Britain, at a terrible human cost.
Sources
- World History Encyclopedia. Sugar & the Rise of the Plantation System · Reputable source