Sugar and the Caribbean

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X: the planters switched from tobacco to sugar cane in the 1640s, learning how to grow and process it from Dutch traders who had come from Brazil. Y: enslaved Africans became the majority of the island's people, and Barbados became the richest colony in the English empire.

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Source A is useful for studying the effects of the sugar revolution because it was written in 1651 by a planter living through the change. It shows that sugar made the island 'wonderfully rich' and that land prices rose sharply. This fits what I know: after planters such as James Drax switched from poor-quality tobacco to sugar in the 1640s, Barbados became the richest English colony. The letter also shows the social effects: 'the small planters sell up and go'. Sugar needed large estates, mills and boiling houses, so land was bought up into big plantations, and many small farmers and former servants left for other colonies such as Jamaica and Carolina.

The source is especially useful for the change in labour. The planter has bought 'thirty Africans from the Dutch ships', which matches my knowledge that Dutch traders from Brazil supplied enslaved Africans, as well as knowledge and credit. His complaint that English servants 'serve but five years and are then gone or dead' explains why planters turned to enslaved Africans, who were enslaved for life. By about 1660 Africans outnumbered Europeans on the island, and the Slave Code of 1661 gave owners almost total power over them.

The provenance affects its usefulness. Because it is a private letter to his brother, the writer has little reason to lie about prices or his need for workers, so it is likely to be accurate on these points. However, it gives only the owners' point of view. He mentions Africans only as things he has bought, and says nothing about the brutal conditions, the long hours in the boiling house from the workers' point of view, or the high death rate among the enslaved. He might also exaggerate the island's wealth.

Overall, the source is useful for the economic effects of the sugar revolution and for why planters turned to enslaved labour, but an historian would need other evidence to understand the effects on the enslaved Africans, who became the majority of the island's people.

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The capture of Jamaica in 1655 was significant first because it gave England a large, strategic base in the heart of Spain's Caribbean empire. It was the one success of Oliver Cromwell's 'Western Design', a Protestant attack on Catholic Spain: the expedition failed to take Santo Domingo, but captured Jamaica instead. From Port Royal, buccaneers attacked Spanish shipping and towns, protecting the island and enriching its colonists. The most famous, Henry Morgan, sacked Portobelo in 1668 and Panama City in 1671, and was later knighted and made Lieutenant Governor. Spain was forced to recognise English possession of the island in the Treaty of Madrid in 1670.

Secondly, and most importantly in the 18th century, Jamaica became Britain's largest and richest sugar colony. Its land was far larger than Barbados's, and planters copied the Barbados system of sugar and slavery. By 1800 about 300,000 enslaved Africans worked on Jamaica's plantations in brutal conditions, and absentee planters such as the Beckford family used their wealth to buy estates and influence in Britain. So the capture of Jamaica greatly increased both Britain's wealth from the Caribbean and its involvement in the slave trade.

Thirdly, Jamaica was significant as a centre of resistance to slavery. The Maroons, communities of escaped Africans, fought the British until they won treaties in 1739, and Tacky's Revolt in 1760 shook the planters. Above all, the Baptist War of 1831-32, led by Samuel Sharpe, involved tens of thousands of enslaved people and was brutally crushed, but it helped persuade Parliament that slavery could not continue, leading to the Slavery Abolition Act of 1833.

In the long term, Jamaica's links with Britain lasted long after slavery. It remained a colony until independence in 1962, and many of the Caribbean migrants who came to Britain after the arrival of the Empire Windrush in 1948 were Jamaican. So an island captured almost by accident in 1655 shaped the British Caribbean for three centuries and helped shape modern Britain too.

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Individuals have played an important part in the development of Britain's empire, often acting as the spark for important changes. However, they were only able to succeed because of wider factors, especially the search for economic resources, war and government support, and so individuals were not the main factor.

There are many examples of individuals shaping the empire. In the 12th century Henry II built the Angevin Empire and in 1171 went to Ireland, beginning centuries of English rule there. In the 16th century John Hawkins began the English slave trade with his voyages of 1562-68, and Francis Drake's plunder of Spanish treasure on his voyage round the world (1577-80) showed the wealth to be won in the Americas. Walter Raleigh organised the Roanoke colonies of 1585 and 1587, the first English attempts to settle North America. In India, Robert Clive's victory at Plassey in 1757 gave the East India Company control of Bengal, and in Africa Cecil Rhodes used his wealth from diamonds to push British power north into the lands that became Rhodesia. Individuals also shaped the empire's later development: William Wilberforce and Olaudah Equiano helped bring the abolition of the slave trade in 1807, and Mahatma Gandhi, Kwame Nkrumah and Jomo Kenyatta led movements that ended British rule in India, Ghana and Kenya.

However, the search for economic resources was more important, because it explains why these individuals acted and why others followed them. Hawkins, Drake and Raleigh were backed by investors who expected profits. Jamestown survived not because of any one leader, although John Smith's discipline helped, but because John Rolfe's tobacco made money. Barbados became rich through sugar, and the empire in India was built by the East India Company, a business run for its shareholders. Rhodes himself was driven by the gold and diamonds of southern Africa.

War was also more important than individuals in many cases. Jamaica was captured in 1655 by an expedition sent by Cromwell, but it was the Seven Years' War (1756-63), won by the navy and army as a whole, that gave Britain Canada and control in India. Clive's success at Plassey depended on the Company's troops, many of them Indian sepoys, and on Mir Jafar's betrayal of the Nawab. In the 20th century, the Second World War weakened Britain so much that the empire could not be held, whatever its leaders wanted.

Government and technology also played a vital part. Monarchs and Parliament granted charters, passed the Navigation Acts and, after the Indian Rebellion of 1857, took direct control of India. Technology such as better ships, steamships, quinine and the Maxim gun made expansion possible: at Omdurman in 1898 machine guns, not leadership, decided the battle.

Overall, individuals were important as leaders who took opportunities and made decisions at key moments, but they were not the main factor. The empire was built mainly because of the search for economic resources, backed by war, government and technology. Even the greatest individuals, from Drake to Gandhi, succeeded because these wider forces were on their side.