From the beginning of European colonisation, the Caribbean economies depended on foreign trade for their growth and development. The domestic market was very small and import substitution actively discouraged. Yet the countries with which they could engage in commerce were strictly limited in number as a result of consumption patterns for tropical products and imperial trade restrictions. Thus, a small number of states (the core) came to exercise an overwhelming influence on the economic fortunes of the Caribbean countries.

What happened in these core countries – in terms of economic performance, structure and policy – is crucial for a proper understanding of the Caribbean periphery. The standard of living – indeed, the very survival – of the Caribbean countries depended on the opportunities for trade with the core states. There were no exceptions, but Haiti in the nineteenth century is misleadingly often cited as one (the Haitian case is reviewed in detail in Chapter 7). This was not just a matter of trade policy in the core, but it also depended on the evolution of the core economies themselves and their changing trade patterns.

Before the French Revolution began in 1789, the Caribbean played a critical part in the tropical trade of the imperial European powers. Caribbean colonies provided a high proportion of the tropical products imported by the core, and capitalists with Caribbean interests exercised a significant influence on external trade and policies towards slavery. This changed with the spread of European imperialism to countries in Asia, Africa, the Middle East and eventually the Pacific. The once dominant position of the Caribbean in the European colonial empires had altered completely by the end of the nineteenth century and was never recaptured. Indeed, the Caribbean became increasingly marginal to the economic development of the European core states, but the latter remained of huge importance for the economic development of the Caribbean.