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The sugar islands
Sugar cane is a grass that must be crushed and boiled immediately after cutting, so its cultivation was organised in plantations with a factory on site. The sugar economy is the key to understanding why the North American mainland was long a sideline for European powers. Barbados and Saint-Domingue generated more export value than all thirteen colonies combined. The system is also the direct economic link between New England and slavery: New England sold dried fish, timber and horses to the islands and bought molasses for rum. No part of British North America stood outside it.
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