Plantations

Francis Bacon, Of Plantations

Council of Trade and Plantations (1660)

I. precedents

Mediterranean sugar production

Sao Thome

slavery and race

II. the plantation complex

A. Iberian pioneers

1581: 150 Spanish plantations in the Caribbean and mainland

Portuguese in Brazil

B. sugar revolution in the British Caribbean

Number of sugar plantations

	1650	1670	1684	1775
Barbados	300	900
Jamaica		146	690
British Caribbean				1800

the work process

C. plantation societies

the role of the British

Barbados

1673: 74 "most eminent" planters owned over 30% of the farmland (200-1000 acres each)

1680: 175 of the biggest planters owned 54% of the land and 60% of the slaves

18th-c Jamaica

Annual French and British sugar production

1760	150,000 tons
1790	290,000 tons

South Carolina rice production

plantocracy

Bryan Edwards and Thomas Thistlewood [diary extract] [Ira Berlin, "Masters of their Universe" (2004)]

 

III. Conclusions

-a fundamentally Atlantic system

-slavery and race

-an industrial enterprise?

-an exported model