With the plantation complex established, British plantation owners found a more salubrious climate for growing sugar in the Atlantic islands. Thus began the series of migrations that moved the plantation complex to different parts of the world. Curtin identifies the mechanisms that precipitated migration in each of the series of locales that the plantation complex moved to and from, explaining other issues that impacted the moves.
A salient thread throughout the book is that of revolution. What he terms the "sugar revolution" is key to the furtherance of the plantation complex. The migration of the plantation complex from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic and then to the New World is at the heart of this revolution, and Curtin explores the reasons that the plantation migrated, particularly the economic and political reasons. Curtin talks about a "mortality revolution" whose declining death rate due to
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