Short answers, pulled from the story.
Caribbean sugar plantations produced 80 to 90 percent of all the sugar consumed in Western Europe. That dominance eventually ended when European-grown sugar beet came to supplant Caribbean supply.
The Portuguese established the first sugar plantations in the Americas in the 1550s at Engenho dos Erasmos, located on the island of Sao Vincente off the coast of their Brazilian settlement colony.
After the abolition of slavery, plantation owners brought indentured laborers from India, China, Portugal, and other places to continue working the sugar industry. In the 20th century, large-scale production using wage labor continued across much of the region.
The Haitian Revolution ended slavery in Saint-Domingue at the turn of the 19th century, and Haiti lost its position as the world's leading sugar producer. Cuba then became the most substantial sugar plantation colony in the Caribbean, outperforming the British islands.
Sugar plantations caused deforestation, water pollution, and soil erosion across the Caribbean. The damage was documented in the Dominican Republic in the 16th century, Martinique in the 17th, Jamaica and Haiti in the 18th, and Cuba and Puerto Rico in the 19th century.
In 1832, the median-size plantation in Jamaica held about 150 enslaved workers. Nearly one in four enslaved people on the island lived on units that held at least 250 people.