The economic history of the West Indies since emancipation deals for the most part with the decline of the sugar industry, the efforts made to rehabilitate the industry, the relative success or failure of these efforts, and the attempts also to diversify the economy. Despite declining fortunes, the white minority retained political supremacy, and perhaps because of their uncertainty about their economic position they fought to maintain both political and social supremacy. To a significant degree, therefore, Jamaican society after emancipation was as much the product of slavery as it had been in the eighteenth century. The same social groups as were evident before were carried over into the free society. The blacks still remained at the bottom of the social ladder. The coloured groups, who represented the middle classes of society, were beginning to vie with the whites for economic and political power. They were to be increasingly successful in gaining this objective as more and more white planters were forced to abandon their estates and return “home.”