Historians have recently emphasized how Europe, the Americas, and Africa were each enmeshed in a system of commercial and cultural exchange known as the Atlantic World. International trade quickly became the guiding force behind settling the New World, as plantations in the Americas furnished a variety of cash crops to European markets. The settling of the colonies, and the rise of plantation agriculture also led to the rise of the international slave trade, which earned immense profits for metropolitan merchants (and, initially, African kings) even as it sentenced millions of Africans to a life of toil.

Over time, the colonial economies became increasingly integrated, especially in the English colonies, where North American produce such as rice, timber, and other products were shipped to West Indian planters, who in turn supplied European markets with sugar. American plantations shipped other staples as well, including tobacco, coffee (in the case of South American...