Over a period of several centuries, Europeans overseas developed an intricate system of plantation agriculture - a plantation complex - that was different from the agricultural institutions they normally used at home. This economic and political order, centered on slave plantations in the New-World tropics, reached a peak in the 18th century but its earliest origins can be traced back to the medieval Mediterranean. Its end came only with the abolition of slavery in Brazil and Cuba in the late 1880s, and many aspects lasted well into the 20th century.