Praxis II Citizenship

Answer: B - During the Age of Discovery, the most important cash crop in the West Indies was sugar cane. Sugar cane was indigenous to Asia and very expensive for Europeans to acquire. After Columbus introduced the crop in the West Indies it flourished, and it ultimately became the region’s most valuable cash crop. Subsequently, the production of sugar cane was one of the primary motives for the expansion of the Atlantic slave trade. Over the first three centuries of European colonization in the Western Hemisphere, plantation owners would grow their plantations to produce literally tons of sugar per year, which required massive workforces to generate.