Places

Though Spain originally colonized a majority of the Caribbean, by the 1800s, Britain’s influence over the island plantations steadily increased. The British possessed Jamaica, Bermuda, the Bahamas, Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica, Anguilla, Trinidad and Tobago, British Honduras, Turks and Caicos, and the Cayman Islands. These lands were ideal for growing sugarcane, which was in high demand in Britain in the eighteenth century. Growing sugar cane requires hard work, so Africans were stolen from the West Coast of Africa and forced into slavery to work the Caribbean plantations. The “Slave Coast” of Africa from which slaves were being taken included Senegal, Sierra Leone, Congo, and Angola (“Slave Trade from Africa to the Americas 1650-1860”)