The British aristocracy needed to find a labor force to work on its plantations in the Americas. The major possibilities were indentured servants from Britain, Native Americans, and West Africans.[10] During this time, off the North American mainland, Barbados became an English Colony in 1624 and the Caribbean's Jamaica in 1655. These and other Caribbean colonies became the center of wealth and the focus of the slave trade for the growing English empire.[11]