se slaves directly from Africa. Moreover, because their sole
interest in the islands was economic profit, they could make a double
profit by selling their seasoned slaves as well as selling their
plantation produce. While the Africans' stay in the Caribbean, obviously,
was not part of their African heritage, it was part of the experience
which they brought with them to the Colonies. Many of the events which
occurred in the Caribbean islands had important repercussions in the
American Colonies.

A quarter of a century after Columbus had discovered the New World, the
first African slaves were brought to the West Indies to supplement the
inadequate labor supply. The Indians who lived on the islands were few in
number and had had no experience in plantation agriculture. As the
shortage of labor became severe, the plantation owners began to import
criminals and were willing to accept the poor and the drunks who had been
seized from the streets of European ports.

There was also a continual stream of indentured servants, but this influx
was nowhere nearly large enough to fill the growing labor demands. The
advantage of African slaves over indentured servants was that they could
be purchased outright for life. Moreover, the Africans had no contacts
in the European capitals through which they could bring pressure to bear
against the abuses of the plantation masters. In fact, African slaves
really had no rights which the master was obliged to respect. The supply
of African labor seemed to be endless, and many masters found it cheaper
to overwork a slave and to replace him when he died, rather than take
care of him while he lived. In short, the plantation experience was a
brutalizing one.

In the beginning, the major plantation crop had been tobacco, It could be
grown efficiently on small plantations of twenty or thirty acres. The
tobacco plant needed constant, careful attention throughout the season,
and this meant that the number of raw, unskilled laborers that was needed
was relatively small.

However, when the new colony of Virginia entered the tobacco field in the
early seventeenth century, it was able to produce larger quantities of
tobacco at a lower price. The Caribbean islands were hit by a severe
economic depression. The Dutch came with a solution. They had previously
conquered parts of northern Brazil from the Portuguese, and there they
had learned the techniques of plantation sugar production. It could only
be