Sugar and slave trade

The Portuguese found that Brazil had good conditions for sugar plantations. Brazil established a slave-based plantation economy and introduced its sugarcane to the Caribbean around 1647. This led to the growth which came to sustain the sugar craze of Western Europe.

A huge demand for labour arose to cultivate sugar plantations. It was met by a transatlantic slave trade, where about 12,570,000 slaves were shipped from Africa to the Americas from 1501 to 1867.