to a 2021 study, "historical property rights institutions [in Haiti] created high transaction costs for converting land to cane production", relative to the other Caribbean countries. As a result, Haiti lost its place as the leading sugar producer in the world. After the end of slavery in Saint Domingue at the turn of the 19th century, with the Haitian Revolution, Cuba became the most substantial sugar plantation colony in the Caribbean, outperforming the British islands. In the 19th century, sugar dominated Martinique, Grenada, Jamaica, Saint Croix, Barbados, the Leeward Islands, Saint Domingue, Cuba, as well as many other islands that had been run by French, British, or Spanish owners. During the late 19th and 20th centuries, the sugar cane industry came to dominate Puerto Rico's economy, both under the colonial rule of Spain and under the United States. After slavery, sugar plantations used a variety of forms of labour including workers imported from colonial India and Southern China working as indentured servants on European owned plantations (coolie). In the 20th century, large-scale sugar production using wage labour continued in many parts of the region. Environmental impact The sugar cane industry had an adverse impact on the environment as this industry grew in Caribbean countries. These included the destruction of forests, water pollution, and loss of fertility and erosion of soils. These problems were seen on a different scale in the Dominican Republic in the 16th century; the Lesser Antilles in the 17th century; Jamaica and Haiti in the 18th century; and Cuba and Puerto Rico in the 19th century. Although these nations have taken measures to mitigate the impacts of the sugar revolution, in some there are still traces of what the environmental historian of the Caribbean and Latin America, Reinaldo Funes Monzote, describes as a "serious deterioration" of the natural environment, with socio-economic consequences. The impacts concerning irrigation and pollution of water runoff are seen as the most profound issues in sugar cane cultivation. See also Trapiche, a mill used for sugar cane Colonial molasses trade Casa-grande in Brazil Sugar production in the Danish West Indies Slavery in the British and French Caribbean Valle de los Ingenios - Valley of the Sugar Mills, Cuba Amazon rubber boom Coffee production in Brazil West India Interest London Society of West India Planters and Merchants Centre for the Study of the Legacies of British Slave-ownership References Bibliography Agriculture in the Caribbean Economic