Free-coloreds’ earlier land claims beat arriving whites to the coffee boom

Evidence

Especially after the Seven Years’ War, when they came in increasing numbers, white migrants to the colony found themselves competing with the population of free-coloreds. Seeking to take advantage of the expanding coffee economy, they often found “that the free-coloreds were there before them”: many had settled in mountainous areas before the coffee boom and established plantations on land they already owned. — Dubois, Laurent, Avengers of the New World_ The Story of…, 225