The sugar boom produced a vertiginous inflation in plantation land prices
Evidence
Sugarcane production required good land, irrigation, a large labor force, and expensive equipment. It promised major profits, but it required an initial investment far greater than tobacco or indigo. Once the sugar boom hit Saint-Domingue, there was a rush to purchase the best land and a vertiginous rise in prices. The governor wrote in 1700 that a plantation that had sold for 70 écus eighteen months earlier could now not be purchased for 2,000, even when nothing was being cultivated there. — Dubois, Laurent, Avengers of the New World_ The Story of…, 79
Categorization
Category: Factual Claims
Related
- The sugar boom caused land prices to rise nearly thirtyfold (similarity 0.96)
- Saint-Domingue’s plantation economy grew at explosive, compounding speed across the eighteenth century (similarity 0.83)
- The coffee boom expanded rather than displaced sugar production in Saint-Domingue (similarity 0.83)
- Cuba replaced Saint-Domingue as the Atlantic’s leading sugar supplier with massive slave imports (similarity 0.80)
- Saint-Domingue alone led the Atlantic world in sugar and coffee (similarity 0.79)
- Haiti’s fall as sugar producer was filled by Cuba’s slave-driven plantations (similarity 0.79)