Declining Sugar Prices and Land Utilization in the British Lesser Antilles

Abstract

their humid, fertile plains, tilled by Negro slaves, began to yield the sugar which brought fortunes to the slaveholders. Upon this agricultural foundation arose a wealthy landed aristocracy which was influential enough to be a leading power in the English Parliament. For nearly two centuries the influence of this planter class waxed and waned until emancipation and the fall of sugar prices finally brought about its decline. The loss of West Indian political influence was most clearly indicated by the abolition of the British slave trade