The relationship between trade, settlement, and plunder in the early years of the British empire is well brought out by the example of Jamaica, the subject it an illuminating study by Nuala Zahedieh (1986). As she says (p.210). "The Island was a consolation prize acquired in what was little more than a state-sponsered buccaneering raid on the Spanish Indies,"  of Oliver Cromwell's so called "Western design," the initial objective which was to occupy Hispaniola but turned to Jamaica when the expedition was bungled.



Neither the Cromwellian regime nor the that of Charles II was inclined to spend any further military or financial resources on the Island, which had also been neglected by its Spanish possessors, but the location of the town and harbour of Port Royal and its potential as a base for privateering and contraband trade made it "a dagger pointed at the Spanish Empire."



By 1670 Port Royal had over twenty ships and 2,000 men engaged in such nefarious but highly lucrative activities . The most famous and successful of these freebooters was Henry Morgan, Familiar to all aficionados of  Hollywood pirate movies during the era of Errol Flyn and Tyrone Power.

Morgan's raid on Portobello in 1668 alone "produced plunder worth 75,000 pounds sterling, more than seven times the annual value of the Islands sugar exports.

The Spanish settlers in the Island and mainland found it cheaper and more convenient to obtain their imports of European goods through Jamaica than to wait for the annual fleet from Seville or Cadiz as required by official regulations.



Zahedieh argues that, as a result of the profits from plunder and the contraband trade, the island was awash with liquid funds that were invested in sugar plantations and other agricultural activities , making it unnecessary to raise any capital from from England.



She thus refutes the well-known contention of Adam Smith that colonies were a drain on the  productive capital of the mother country, presenting plausible calculations that the rate of return on sugar plantations in Jamaica was of the order of 10% or more, higher than the prevailing rate of interest in England.

Thus Jamaica seems to have been an ideal mercantilist colonial project, requiring no initial capital from the mother country but yielding high returns from plunder and smuggling at the expense of the enemy , and in English ships to boot.



Indeed a better example of the Marxian concept of "Primitive accumulation" cannot be imagined, since Jamaica went on to become the largest sugar exporter in the British Empire for most of the eighteenth century, long after the days of Henry Morgan were over.



Source: POWER AND PLENTY
TRADE, WAR, AND THE WORLD ECONOMY IN THE SECOND MILLENIUM
  Ronald Findley and Kevin O' Rourke :ISBN-10: 0-691-11854-X