2. Migration of sugar cultivation from Asia into the Atlantic

Jan. 1, 2022, 12:43 p.m.

David Eltis

Robert W. Woodruff Professor Emeritus of History

David Richardson

Former Director of the Wilberforce Institute

Introductory Maps


Sugar cultivation began in the Pacific in the pre-Christian era and gradually spread to the eastern Mediterranean, the Gulf of Guinea, then to Brazil, before entering the Caribbean in the mid-seventeenth century. Eighty percent of all captives carried from Africa were taken to sugar-growing areas.