Barbados became an English Colony in the Caribbean in 1624 and Jamaica in 1655. These and other Caribbean colonies became the center of wealth and the focus of the slave trade for the growing English empire. As of 1778, the French imported approximately 13,000 Irish and African cargo for enslavement to the French West Indies.
The Lesser Antilles islands of Barbados, St. Kitts, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Antigua, Martinique, Guadeloupe, Saint Lucia, and Dominica were the first important slave societies of the Caribbean, switching to slavery by the end of the 17th century as their economies converted from tobacco to sugar production. By the middle of the 18th century, British Jamaica and French Saint-Domingue (now Haiti) had become the largest slave societies of the region, rivaling Brazil as a destination for enslaved Africans.
The death rates for black slaves in these islands were higher than the birth rates. The decrease averaged about 3 percent yearly in Jamaica and 4 percent yearly in the smaller islands. The diary of slaveowner Thomas Thistlewood of Jamaica details violence against slaves and constitutes important historical documentation of the conditions for Caribbean slaves.
For centuries slavery made sugarcane production possible. The low level of technology made production difficult and labor-intensive. At the same time, the demand for sugar was rising, particularly in Great Britain. The French colony of Saint-Domingue (HATI) quickly began to out-produce all of the British islands’ sugar combined. Though sugar was driven by slavery, rising costs for the British made it easier for the British abolitionists to be heard.
Slavery was first abolished by the French Republic in 1794, which took effect in all French colonies. Slavery in the French West Indies was reinstated in 1802 by Napoleon I as France re-secured its possessions in the Caribbean, aside from Saint-Domingue, which declared independence on January 1, 1804. Britain abolished the slave trade in 1807 and slavery itself in 1833. In France, the slave trade was abolished by Napoleon in 1815, while slavery was re-abolished in 1848.
