Europeans first encountered sugar during the crusades, but it was a luxury product until the Dutch developed the process of making sugar from sugarcane in Brazil. The Dutch played a major role in the sugar revolution as they supplied everything the planters needed to start the sugar Revolution. They supplied the slaves necessary for the labor intensive sugar cultivation, but also the capital and the technical know-how. The Dutch West India Company controlled the richest sugar-producing area in Brazil from 1630 to 1654 and industrialized the sugar production. The Dutch financed the trafficking of enslaved Africans to farm sugar and shipped about half a million Africans to their settlements in Dutch Guiana, where they worked on sugar plantations. The Dutch also taught the English how to produce sugar and the English in turn adopted the Dutch business model, using slaves to plant cash crops
