European possessions in North America included Spanish Florida, Spanish New Mexico, the English colonies of Virginia (with its North Atlantic offshoot, Bermuda) and New England, etc.
The decline of the Eastern Caribbean plantations has been represented by the post-war collapse of sugar production and the subsequent difficulties experienced by the replacement staple, bananas. Since the early 1980s, governments have been involved in transforming the plantation-based settlement structure through various land redistribution projects. Many of these projects have been successful and hold the promise of relative wealth and economic stability for the majority of the island's population. This paper assesses the appropriateness of the trends in the land distribution structure which are being set by the projects.
