The sugar revolution

The 'sugar revolution' concept is commonly used to characterize the transformation of society and economy that occurred in the English and French West Indies in the middle of the seventeenth century. This transformation was marked by an abrupt shift to monoculture, plantation agriculture, and dense populations of enslaved Africans, producing great wealth. Larger claims have been made for sugar's impact on the Atlantic world, and sugar revolutions have been identified in other places and other times. A critical review of the subject literature reveals a general agreement that the concept does identify a genuine historical discontinuity.