This essay examines the condition of the British West India Sugar Industry at the end of the nineteenth century, by referring to the Report of the West India Royal Commission of 1897. It was appointed to enquire into the condition and prospects of the British West Indies and to suggest means calculated to restore the prosperity of those colonies. Such colonies as Barbados, Antigua and St. Kitts-Nevis produced virtually nothing else than sugar. These were still sugar monoculture colonies at the end of the nineteenth century. On the other hand, by the 1890s, Grenada and Jamaica had built up substantial alternative industries.
But there were colonies in the state of extreme depression. The sugar-cane industries in such colonies as St. Vincent and Tobago were threatened with serious reduction or extinction. Many sugar estates are being abandoned and thrown out of cultivation. Alternative industries have not
built up. That caused distress among the working class. Especially to these depressed colonies the Commission recommended the settlement of the laborers on small plots of land as peasant proprietors, so as to allow them to establish their own subsistence.