West India Trade

The commerce of the Caribbean sugar colonies in sugar, rum, and molasses, the most valuable strand of Atlantic trade in the eighteenth century. British, French, and other planters shipped sugar to Europe; New England distilled West Indian molasses into rum and supplied the islands with fish, timber, and provisions, one leg of the triangular trade that also moved enslaved Africans. Britain’s Molasses Act 1733 and Sugar Act 1764 taxed the traffic and helped sour relations with the American colonies.