The Portuguese planters in Brazil succeeded where the Spaniards in the Antilles failed. Within only a century, the French, and even more the British (though with Dutch help from the outset), became the western world’s great sugar makers and exporters. One wonders why the early phase of the Hispanic sugar industry stagnated so swiftly after such promising beginnings, and the explanations we have are not entirely satisfactory. The flight of island colonists to the Mexican mainland after the conquest of Tenochtitlán (1519–21); the Spaniards’ obsession with metallic riches; the excessively
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French and British sugar plantations were primarily found in Brazil.
I agree with Mintz that the commonly given reasons for Spanish failure in the sugar market are flimsy and unsatisfying. while the conquest of Tenochtitlan was significant and did draw a number of spanish colonists - it does not seem as if it would largely contribute to the fall of a swifty growing economic system. A more probable primary cause would likely be the difference in power and wealth (Comparing Britain and France to Spain and Portugal). But a combination of all of these is most probable (without further reading / research).
