In Barbados and Jamaica (the sugar islands) sugar was a major crop. The owners of these sugar plantations were badly in need of laborers to work for them year round, and because the natives died off so speedily, they needed to bring in someone to do the grueling tasks for them. They tried to use indentured servants, but this was extremely difficult because sugar is a year round, demanding sort of crop and nobody sought after work on those plantations. Any person who had any other kind of alternative would choose to go anywhere else. Eventually they started importing slaves because they were not only cheaper, but easier to replace when they died, as most people who came to these islands did. By 1650, there were approximately 20,000 black slaves in Barbados; and by 1700, nearly as many as 45,000 black slaves in Jamaica (the prevalent sugar producer at this point in time). It was in these West Indian Islands that slavery not only got started for the English, but grew the fastest.South Carolina began as a colony of Barbados. They came there to cultivate crops such as rice and indigo. These settlers brought their slavery practices with them. This idea of growing rice worked well due to the fact that the slaves had experience prior to this experience working with it, and they were just in a good area for growing such a crop. By 1770, black people were nearly eighty percent of the population in South Carolina and the colony of Georgia.Tobacco production in the Chesapeake was growing due to an enormous demand for the product in England. The demand for tobacco in England had grown during the eighteenth century over ten times what it had been originally. With so much expansion in the plantations is was necessary to acquire as many people to work them as possible. In the beginning, indentured servitude was still used. In fact, it was the most common way for settlers to gain passage to America. Working in the Chesapeake wasn‘t the best sit...
