Sugar plantation system transforms demand for African labour

The plantation method of sugar cultivation in the West Indies developed in the years 1640–50. This created a demand for labour far greater than the system of indenture could supply, and gave planters a commodity—sugar—whose profits paid for enslaved Africans. Annual slave exports reached between 70,000 and 80,000 in the eighteenth century, averaging 10 million (or more conservatively 5–6 million) West Africans crossing the Atlantic between 1450 and 1850.