Use the text excerpt to answer the question.
Some historians are convinced that the expansion of slavery was linked to profits planters made
from growing cash crops such as tobacco, rice, indigo, and sugar. By the eighteenth century the
sugar islands in the Caribbean served as a major market place for enslaved people. The sugar
crop and enslaved harvesting of the crop were a major income source for plantation owners in
the Caribbean.
Which of the following accurately investigates the reasons why the African slave trade spread to
the Caribbeans?
(1 point)
The growing demand for sugar encouraged plantation owners to purchase enslaved people to
increase their profits.
The demand to colonize newly conquered lands in Portugal and Britain prompted landowners to
purchase enslaved people.
African slave traders exported enslaved people to the Caribbean in exchange for more fertile
plantation land.
The demand for rice rose during the seventeenth century, which increased the demand of
enslaved people.