However, strong competition from the North American colonies meant that prices in these crops were falling. At that time most local farmers were growing cotton and tobacco. In the 17th century sugar cane was brought to British West Indies from Brazil. The developing slave-based industries made Britain rich and prosperous. It has been estimated that overall, about 12 million Africans were captured to be taken to the Americas in slavery. In 1655 Jamaica was secured.īritish slave traders started supplying enslaved African people to the British colonies to work on plantations.īritain‘s involvement in the slave trade developed further in 1713, when the Treaty of Utrecht granted British slave traders the contract, known as the Asiento, to trade 144,000 enslaved people a year to Spanish South America.Īfter 1700, the numbers of enslaved people being transported increased greatly.Īround six million Africans were enslaved and taken to the Americas, at least one third of them in British ships.
The first colonies of the British Empire were founded in North America (Virginia, 1607) and the West Indies (Barbados, 1625).
