In the excerpt by Sidney Mintz we see a growing colonial obsession with sugar cane. The English people in particular had a growing dependence on sugar. Mintz describes the increase in dependence the English colonial and motherland systems relied on sugar cane as a product. Diana Tran<\/a> talks in her response about how this increase in demand for sugar resulted in an increase in demand for labor, and with native populations dying off due to exposure to disease, African slaves were used in greater numbers: \u201cThe native population was diminishing quickly because of overworking, forced migration, and epidemic diseases. This led to the switch of African labor. It was around the sixteenth century that sugar plantations began to appear. As Vierira mentioned in his article, the need for African labor rose as the demand for sugar soared.\u201d<\/p>\n This increase in African slave labor led to a few different types of unique social outcomes, the most interesting being the concept of the maroon settlements. These settlements grew out of enslaved Africans escaping into the hinterlands and creating spaces that were free from bondage: \u201cBy escaping into the American hinterland to create maroon colonies (from the Spanish, and possibly Ta\u00edno, term cimarr\u00f3n, or runaway), rebels did not directly challenge the emerging slave systems as much as they plagued individual planters and mine owners. As early as the mid-sixteenth century, maroon communities in present-day Mexico, Panama, Colombia, Venezuela, and Ecuador grew populous enough\u2014or inhabited such naturally defensible terrain\u2014to defy the Europeans and force colonial administrators to recognize their freedom and autonomy.\u201d(Egerton et al., 208). The historical significance of these maroon communities lies in their exceptionalism. In times of growing European colonial power these runaways were able to establish communities of their own, usually in unknown territory, and avoid have their newly gained freedom challenged by European powers. The acknowledgment of their autonomy by colonial powers particularly gives us an interesting space for investigation as to how these communities functioned and interacted with other peoples.<\/p>\n