The Caribbean economies, at the start of the nineteenth century, bore all the hallmarks of 300 years of European colonialism. The indigenous population had been wiped out by war or disease and replaced by a labour force whose main activity was the production of commodities for export. The land was either devoted to exports or to products such as ground provisions and cattle-grazing that supported exports indirectly. The capital was invested either directly in the export sector or in the infrastructure needed to bring the main commodities to market. Only in the Spanish colonies – Cuba and Puerto Rico – was there a significant small-scale peasantry concentrating on the domestic market, and this was a consequence of imperial neglect rather than a deliberate policy of encouraging an internal market.

No other region of the world was so specialised in exports. The mainland colonies of Latin America had also been subjected to 300 years of colonial exploitation, but many of them had large indigenous or mestizo populations engaged in agricultural production for themselves or for the internal market. The same was true of the African and Asian economies, whether they were independent, such as Ethiopia and Thailand, recently colonised, such as Natal in South Africa and Bengal in India, or long-standing European colonies, such as the Philippines. Only the Caribbean had economies where virtually all factors of production were devoted either directly or indirectly to exports.