ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to establish continuity from Colonial activity as planters in the Holy Land in the twelfth century to the introduction of sugar cane to the French and English Antilles in the seventeenth century. Colonial activity in the eastern Mediterranean spread from the Holy Land to the islands, archipelagoes, and mainland of southeastern Europe. Colonial organization in the Mediterranean in the Middle Ages and in the Atlantic area at the beginning of the modern era can be divided into some main types. The study of land concessions made in the Atlantic colonies reveals both a direct descent from medieval colonization and an adaptation of medieval metropolitan institutions to the colonial milieu. The old centers of production in the Mediterranean had completely given up competing, and the Atlantic zone had achieved complete supremacy. The passage of medieval slavery in the Mediterranean and southern Europe to colonial slavery in America was thus scarcely noticeable; it was a phenomenon of simple continuity.
