The Leeward Islands: Sugar, Slavery, and Survival

The Atlantic Slave Trade: Empire Built on Human Suffering — Fexingo History · Oct 12, 2026 · 7m · transcript

We left the mainland Americas and the Caribbean’s great plantation hubs behind to explore a smaller, sharper corner of the Atlantic world: the Leeward Islands. This episode focuses on Nevis and Antigua in the mid-seventeenth century, where the brutal mechanics of sugar production were first codified into law. We look at the rise of the planter class, the sheer demographic shock that turned these islands into slave societies almost overnight, and the specific legal frameworks like the Barbados Slave Code that rippled across the region. Lucas and Luna trace how this dense concentration of…