 By 1640, however, the Compagnie des Îles de l'Amérique had gone bankrupt, and they thus sold Guadeloupe to Charles Houël du Petit Pré who began plantation agriculture, with the first African slaves arriving in 1650.Ownership of the island then passed to the French West India Company before it was annexed to France in 1674 under the tutelage of their Martinique colony.Institutionalised slavery, enforced by the Code Noir from 1685, led to a booming sugar plantation economy.