Puerto Rican economy and society developed only slowly during the first three centuries of Spanish colonization. The island, whose precious metal deposits were exhausted by the middle of the sixteenth century, was not very attractive to colonizers. It was used mainly as a military bastion for the defence of Spanish vessels en route from Spain to the Spanish American mainland, and as a port where some of these ships could stock up with fresh water supplies. Apart from Spanish soldiers and officials in San Juan, the island was mainly settled by deserters and runaway slaves who had managed to escape from the plantations on the neighbouring islands, and by some soldiers who, having completed their military service, decided to establish themselves in the country as independent farmers. Local production was fundamentally for family subsistence.

It was not until the end of the eighteenth century that Spain began to concern itself with making Puerto Rico a productive colony rather than one dependent on external financial support. This concern became a vital necessity with the disintegration of the Empire at the beginning of the nineteenth century. A large number of Spanish families from the newly independent mainland colonies, as well as French families from Louisiana and Haiti, began to arrive on the island. The Spanish government gave them land and facilities to start cultivation for export and it did away with some impediments to trade which had been imposed on the island in favour of merchants from Seville and Cadiz.