1705-00-00: (France Begins Extensive Sugarcane Cultivation in Saint-Domingue, Scaling Up the Plantation System That Would Make the Colony the Wealthiest in t…

1705-00-00: (France Begins Extensive Sugarcane Cultivation in Saint-Domingue, Scaling Up the Plantation System That Would Make the Colony the Wealthiest in the Caribbean and Demand an Ever-Increasing Supply of Enslaved African Labor): In 1705, France began expanding sugarcane cultivation in Saint-Domingue on a large scale. This was the moment when the colony’s economy shifted from frontier settlement to industrial plantation agriculture, a transition that would transform Saint-Domingue into the wealthiest colony in the Caribbean within a few decades. Every expansion of the cane fields required more enslaved labor, which meant more ships crossing the Atlantic, more human beings in chains, more death on the voyage and on the plantations. The sugar economy and the slave trade grew together because they were the same system.