What conditions drove sugar production and slavery in the Western Hemisphere? Reading: It is impossible to think about sugar production in the West Indies without thinking about slavery. The labor of enslaved Africans was integral to the cultivation of the cane and production of sugar. Slaves toiled in the fields and the boiling houses, supplying the huge amounts of labor that sugar required. Overall some four million slaves were brought to the Caribbean, and almost all ended up on the sugar plantations. Conditions were harsh, and mortality rates were extremely high through all stages of slaves’ lives. In some sugar colonies, the slave population was ten times that of Europeans, and slave uprisings were an ever-present fear for the planters. Slave trading was part of a highly profitable triangle of trade that spanned the Atlantic. Manufactured goods were traded to the West African coast for slaves, who were shipped to the sugar colonies (the infamous Middle Passage) and sugar, molasses and rum were shipped from the islands to England.