From West Indies and other colonies sugar...

From West Indies and other colonies sugar, tobacco, indigo, cotton, coffee and other raw materials were taken to the mother country (i.e., England) where they were processed and then re-imported.[^1] The plantations were founded on slavery and were protected by monopolies. Then came the secession of 13 colonies of America which closed a big market against the British held West Indies. It’s another effect was that the now independent U.S.A.

turned towards French held Islands of Saint Domingue (Haiti), Cuba and Brazil. Dr. Williams writes, “ The superiority of the French sugar colonies was for the British planters the chief among the many ills which flew out of the Pandora's Box that was the American Revolution. Between 1783 and 1789 the progress of the French sugar islands, of Saint Domingue especially, was the most amazing phenomenon in colonial development.

The fertility of the French soil was decisive, French sugar cost one-fifth less than Britain, the average yield in Saint Domingue and Jamaica was five to one. ” [^2] The disastrous effect upon British West Indies may be judged by the fact that “ in 1775 Jamaica had 775 plantations; by 1791, out of every hundred, twenty three had been sold for debt, twelve were in the hands of receivers, while seven had been abandoned; and the West Indian planters, indebted to the enormous sum of twenty millions.

” Gradually, British planters irretrievably lost that ascendancy which they had so long enjoyed in the European Market. “ French colonial exports, over eight million pounds, and imports, over four millions, employed 164,000 tons of shipping and 33,000 sailors; British colonial exports, five million pounds, and imports, less than two millions, employed 148,000 tons of shipping and 14,000 seamen.

In every respect the sugar colonies had become vastly more essential to France than they were to England. ” [^3] Thus the cost of sugar (and likewise of all such products) was becoming too high. Dr. Williams explains, “ The West Indian monopoly was not only unsound in theory, it was unprofitable in practice. In 1828 it was estimated that it cost the British people annually more than one and a half million pounds. In 1844 it was costing the country 70,000 pounds a week and London 6,000 pounds.