Coffee Plantation in Jamaica, 1872

This Marianne North painting shows a typical coffee plantation in Jamaica's Blue Mountains in 1872. The relative size of Jamaica meant that it always had a more diversified crop economy than the other more mono cultural sugar islands. Coffee was grown in the blue mountains of Jamaica from the 1720s onwards. However, with the price of sugar falling the need to find alternative crops intensified throughout the Nineteenth Century. Image courtesy of Art UK