Tobacco glut and Brazil’s sugar wars drove the English to sugar cultivation

Evidence

Between 1624 and 1634, tobacco became the main staple of the colonies, earning in that period profits that attracted more and more English and French planters to it. By the end of this period, a glut of tobacco had hit the market and prices declined. The resultant long depression of the late 1630s and early 1640s compelled the search for a new staple, despite the lingering expectations that tobacco would recover. … The cunning of history then intervened, cutting off Europe’s supply of New World sugar as one result of the wars for the possession of Brazil between the Spanish, the Portuguese, the Dutch and the Luso-Brazilians. — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 588

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the general pattern of commodity boom-bust cycles driving colonial expansion discussed in Robinson’s larger argument about capitalism’s origins.