Enslaved Africans confronted planters' indifference to their survival by fighting for the right to an individual plot and the time to cultivate it. These rights varied over time and across plantation colonies. Enslaved people were particularly vulnerable on sugar islands with flat topography, where food crops competed for space with lucrative cane. As sugar cane engulfed all arable land on several islands in the British West Indies, enslaved people lost the right to individual fields. Planters dealt with the shortage of food by importing supplies from mainland North America, which were rationed for each worker. On these islands, subsistence plots became restricted to the dooryard gardens around the enslaved people's dwellings and were the sole source of choice and variety in their food. When the wars of the American and French Revolutions profoundly disrupted the supply lines of this import system, starvation resulted (Berlin and Morgan, 1993, pp. 1-45; Higman, 1995, p. 204). The upheavals created an opening for enslaved people to restore the right to independent production that earlier generations had known. Independent plots not only granted them more autonomy in their food choices but, importantly, also provided leverage to demand some relief from plantation labour to cultivate their preferred food (Pulsipher, 1994, pp. 202-222).