Haiti, Jamaica, and many of the other Caribbean islands were apparently ludicrously profitable in their slave plantation heydays, but none of these countries are extremely rich now. Was this because it was only profitable with respect to money being extracted for a tiny group of peolle that made it seem that way, and in terms of providing wealth to a nation of people it would be?
Was it blockade (in the case of Haiti) or lack of continued capital investment?
We’re their case crops grown better elsewhere?
Or was it that they were only profitable under the horrifyingly brutal system of slavery that churned through humans like they were some raw material and under a not crime-against-humanity regime they weren’t?
What changed? I know the Caribbean is diverse but weren’t most of them similar plantation cash-crop economies growing relatively similar crops, so there have to be some through lines?
Edit: with the way this blew up I want to note I’m not Haitian, nor an expert in Haitian or Caribbean history. I can claim some expertise in agricultural and environmental history and tell you about plantation economies in the 18th and 19th century. I’ve read and learned about the Haitian revolution but I’m sure there are gaps in my knowledge.
I and others wrote about Haitian plantations some years ago here: https://reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/dsa0g1/_/f6puguv/?context=1
Saint-Domingue was ludicrously profitable, but it was made profitable by a system extremely expensive, highly sophisticated plantations based by the unspeakably brutal subjugation of enslaved labor. The revolution took a huge toll in terms of lives and destruction, and while some folks had fought with the aim of creating a new kind of life, ultimately the key leaders who came out of the revolution took power chasing the dream of recreating the riches of Saint-domingue without the same level of subjugation. What they found was that the infrastructure for the plantations had been destroyed, neither capital nor technical expertise was forthcoming from France or other Colonial nations, and the free Creole population was not willing to work on plantations under the conditions required to make the newly constituted Haiti profitable.
Americans were actually split on support for early Haiti, and there was a faction (driven by, primarily, northern merchants who had less investment in slavery as an institution and wanted access to the wealth of Saint-Dominque since before the revolution) who actively pushed for trade and support going to the island. When it became very apparent the Haitians weren’t going to turn around and supply Americans with game changing amounts or sugar, though, American support dried up and the Haitians decided to make their ill-fated deal with France, still in the hopes of securing foreign capital and recreating the prosperity many felt was still the one pathway available to them.
Many of the British colonies became substantially less profitable after emancipation - at the same time, competition increased from South American (Brazil, specifically) and the East Indies, driving down overall prices and changing the economics of running sugar and tobacco plantations.