# Sugar Boom and Enslaved Labour (c. 1763)

URL: https://allhistories.com/grenada/timeline/1763-sugar-boom-and-enslaved-labour
Location: Grenada
Themes: main-event

Under French rule Grenada had been a relatively modest colony of small sugar, indigo, coffee and cocoa estates. After 1763 British and especially Scottish investors, backed by London and Glasgow merchant houses, bought out many French proprietors, borrowed heavily and converted land to sugar, building water mills, windmills and boiling houses across the island and on Carriacou. The expansion was driven by the forced migration of enslaved Africans. Ships brought captives directly from the Bight of Biafra, the Gold Coast, the Windward Coast, Sierra Leone and West Central Africa, and by the late eighteenth century the enslaved population numbered some 26,000 to 28,000 people, against fewer than 2,000 whites and a few hundred free people of colour. Planters such as Ninian Home, owner of the Paraclete and Waltham estates with over 400 enslaved workers, made fortunes that financed country houses in Scotland. By the 1770s Grenada was producing more sugar than any other British Ceded Island and ranked among the most valuable colonies in the Caribbean; before 1795 it reportedly generated the second-largest annual income in the British West Indies. The boom created the demographic and social structure of modern Grenada, in which the descendants of enslaved Africans form the large majority of the population. At this point in the timeline (1763–1779), the King of Great Britain was George III (4 March 1762 – 4 July 1779); the Governor of Grenada was George Scott (1762–1764).

## Why it matters
The sugar boom made Grenada a major British colony and brought the African ancestors of most modern Grenadians to the island.

Ruler at the Time: [George III](https://allhistories.com/grenada/rulers/george-iii-1762)

Governor of Grenada: George Scott

## Sources
- [Wikipedia — Sugar plantations in the Caribbean](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sugar_plantations_in_the_Caribbean)
- [Encyclopaedia Britannica — sugar plantation West Indies](https://www.britannica.com/search?query=sugar+plantation+West+Indies)
- [Slave Voyages database](https://www.slavevoyages.org/)
- [UCL Legacies of British Slavery](https://www.ucl.ac.uk/lbs/)
- [Wikipedia — British Conquest And Fédon'S Rebellion (period overview)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F%C3%A9don%27s_rebellion)