Sugar plantations were the backbone of

Sugar was the most important crop throughout the Caribbean, although other crops such as coffee, indigo, and rice were also grown. Sugar cane was best grown on relatively flat land that was near the coast, where the soil was naturally yellow and fertile; mountainous parts of the islands were less likely to be used for cane cultivation.

In the mid-17th century, sugar cane was brought into what later became the British West Indies by the Dutch,[1][2][3] from Brazil. Upon landing in Barbados and other islands, they quickly urged local growers to change their main crops from cotton and tobacco to sugar cane. With depressed prices of cotton and tobacco, due mainly to stiff competition from the North American colonies, the farmers switched, leading to a boom in the Caribbean economies. Sugar was quickly snapped up by the British, who used it in cakes and to sweeten teas.