Western Civilization

a drop in the output of the silver mines and the pov-

erty of the Spanish monarchy. As the seventeenth cen-

tury began, both Portugal and Spain found themselves

facing new challenges to their American empires from

the Dutch, English, and French, who increasingly

sought to create their own colonial empires in the New

World.

THE WEST INDIES Both the French and English colonial

empires in the New World included large parts of the

West Indies. The English held Barbados, Jamaica, and

Bermuda, and the French possessed Saint-Domingue,

Martinique, and Guadeloupe.

On these tropical islands, both the English and the

French had developed plantation economies, worked by

African slaves, which produced tobacco, cotton, coffee,

and sugar, all products increasingly in demand in

Europe.

The “sugar factories,” as the sugar plantations in the

Caribbean were called, played an especially prominent

role. By the last two decades of the eighteenth century,

the British colony of Jamaica, one of Britain’s most im-

portant, was producing 50,000 tons of sugar annually

with the labor of 200,000 African slaves. By the early

eighteenth century, sugar was the main export from

Britain’s American colonies. The French colony

of Saint-Domingue (later Haiti) had 500,000

slaves working on three thousand plantations at

the same time. This colony produced 100,000

tons of sugar a year, but at the expense of a

high death rate from the brutal treatment of

the slaves.

BRITISH NORTH AMERICA The Dutch were among

the first to establish settlements on the North

American continent after Henry Hudson, an

English explorer hired by the Dutch, in 1609

discovered the river that bears his name. Within

a few years, the Dutch had established the

mainland colony of New Netherland, which

Kingston

Santo

Domingo (^) L
es
ser
(^) An
til
les
Virgin Is.
Barbados
Great
er (^)
(^)
(^) A
ntill
es Guadeloupe
Martinique
CUBA
FLORIDA
JAMAICA
SAINT-
DOMINGUE
PUERTO
RICO
HISPANIOLA
Atlantic
0 250 Miles
0 250 500 Kilometers
Spanish settlements
French settlements
English settlements
The West Indies
A Sugar Mill in the
West Indies.Cane
sugar was one of the
most valuable products
produced in the West
Indies. By 1700, sugar
was replacing honey as
a sweetener for
increasing numbers of
Europeans. This
seventeenth-century
French illustration shows
the operation of a sugar
mill in the French West
Indies.
Navy Historical Service, Vincennes//Gianni Dagli Orti/The Art Archive at Art Resource, NY
346 Chapter 14 Europe and the World: New Encounters, 1500–1800
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