Soil exhaustion from careless sugar cultivation devastated whole islands

Evidence

Trinidad’s increase in productivity was less an indication of the new targets of opportunity for British capital than of the problems being encountered in the older colonies. Curacao, St. Eustatius, Saba, St. Martin, Tortola, Tobago, Grenada, and St. Vincent, Williams notes, were or were becoming “barren islands,” their soils devastated by careless sugar cultivation. Their planters found the transfer of slaves and other forms of capital to Trinidad both necessary and convenient. Trinidad’s shortage of labor, a problem acute enough to arrest the full utilization of its fertile soil, could only be addressed in this fashion after the abolition of the slave trade. — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 777

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Soil formation takes centuries, making its loss nearly irreparable — Vinson Brown, Reading the Woods: Seeing More in…, 230