Saint-Domingue alone led the Atlantic world in sugar and coffee

Evidence

Sugar was the economic miracle of the eighteenth century. Originally from the Middle East, sugarcane had been cultivated on Spanish and Portuguese islands of the eastern Atlantic for centuries. The Spanish in Hispaniola and the Portuguese in Brazil pioneered cane cultivation in the Americas, and the French and English drew on their examples and on the knowledge and finances of the Dutch in establishing their plantation societies in the Caribbean. These colonies both depended on and drove the expansion of the emerging capitalist system of the Atlantic world. Starting in the seventeenth century a remarkable spiral of cause and effect transformed sugar from a luxury enjoyed by only the wealthiest Europeans to a necessity that was a central part of many Europeans’ diets. — Dubois, Laurent, Avengers of the New World_ The Story of…, 75 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Caribbean sugar colonies drove the rise of Atlantic capitalism — Dubois, Laurent, Avengers of the New World_ The Story of…, 75; Geography and Atlantic position structured Saint-Domingue’s revolutionary history; The Atlantic sugar economy forced Louverture to restrict emancipation for economic survival

Related

• Caribbean sugar colonies drove the rise of Atlantic capitalism (similarity 0.88)
• The coffee boom expanded rather than displaced sugar production in Saint-Domingue (similarity 0.85)
• Saint-Domingue’s plantation economy grew at explosive, compounding speed across the eighteenth century (similarity 0.84)
• The Atlantic sugar economy forced Louverture to restrict emancipation for economic survival (similarity 0.83)
• Cuba replaced Saint-Domingue as the Atlantic’s leading sugar supplier with massive slave imports (similarity 0.82)
• The sugar boom caused land prices to rise nearly thirtyfold (similarity 0.82)
• Saint-Domingue grew from frontier into the world’s most valuable colony within a century (similarity 0.82)
• Columbus’s 1493 sugar introduction triggered an Atlantic slave-sugar industry reordering the world (similarity 0.81)
• Sixteenth-century sugar plantations required enormous capital and labor investment. (similarity 0.81)
• Sugar dominated Atlantic trade with slaves second by 1750 (similarity 0.80)
• Louverture’s forced-labor regime revived the Saint-Domingue plantation economy (similarity 0.79)
• The sugar boom produced a vertiginous inflation in plantation land prices (similarity 0.79)
• Haiti’s fall as sugar producer was filled by Cuba’s slave-driven plantations (similarity 0.79)
• Saint-Domingue was the most productive colony the modern world had known (similarity 0.79)
• Saint-Domingue’s prosperity flowed from defying metropolitan trade regulation (similarity 0.79)

Broader Connections

• Caribbean sugar colonies drove the rise of Atlantic capitalism #corroborates (0.60) — Dubois, Laurent, Avengers of the New World_ The Story of…, 75