In the beginning, the major plantation crop had been tobacco, It could be grown efficiently on small plantations of twenty or thirty acres. The tobacco plant needed constant, careful attention throughout the season, and this meant that the number of raw, unskilled laborers that was needed was relatively small. However, when the new colony of Virginia entered the tobacco field in the early seventeenth century, it was able to produce larger quantities of tobacco at a lower price. The Caribbean islands were hit by a severe economic depression. The Dutch came with a solution. They had previously conquered parts of northern Brazil from the Portuguese, and there they had learned the techniques of plantation sugar production. It could only be carried on efficiently with plantations of two or three hundred acres, and it required large numbers of unskilled laborers both to plant and harvest the crop and to refine the sugar. The Dutch, then, brought sugar cane to the West Indies. This gave them a new plantation crop, and it also gave them a new outlet for the slave trade which, at that point in history, they had come to dominate. The development of the sugar cane economy in the West Indies produced a basic social revolution. The small tobacco farmers did not have the capital to develop the large sugar plantations. Some of them went into other occupations, but most of them returned to Europe. The new labor needs were filled by a gigantic increase in the importation of African slaves. The ratio of whites to blacks within the islands changed markedly within a matter of one or two decades. The white population consisted of a handful of exceedingly wealthy plantation owners and another handful of white plantation managers. Many of the slaves soon learned new skills associated with sugar manufacturing, thus reducing the need for white labor even further. The rising demand for slaves meant an expansion of the slave trade, and, as West Indian slaves had a high mortality rate and a low birthrate, this meant a continually thriving slave trade. As the ratio between whites and blacks widened, the problem of controlling the slaves grew more serious. Brute force was the only answer. The European governments had tried to solve the problem by requiring the plantation owners to hire a specified number of white workers. However, many owners found it cheaper to pay the fine than to comply with this regulation.