Plantation economy

A plantation economy is an economy which is based on agricultural mass production, usually of a few staple products grown on large farms called plantations. Plantation economies rely on the export of cash crops as a source of income. Prominent plantation crops included cotton, rubber, sugar cane, tobacco, figs, rice, kapok, sisal and indigo. The longer a crop's harvest period, the more efficient plantations are. Scale economies are also achieved by long distances to markets and reduction in the crop's size. Plantation crops also differ in that they need processing immediately after harvesting. Sugar, tea sisal and palm oil are most suited to plantations, coconuts, rubber and cotton to a lesser extent.

Regions with plantation economies have usually been in the southern North American colonies and United States, South America, the Caribbean, and Africa. Fordlândia is a 20th-century example of a plantation economy. Plantation economies are also historically associated with slavery, particularly in the Americas. Plantation economies usually benefit the large countries to which they are exporting, which usually manufacture the raw materials grown on the plantations into goods which are then traded back to the plantation economy. Throughout most of history, the countries receiving the crops have usually been in Western Europe.

Virginia Economy and Tobacco Plantations

Tobacco was the main cash crop grown in Virginia colony. It required a lot of labor, and this made plantation owners to import workers. At first, they depended on indentured servants from Europe. Indentured servants came voluntarily to America under a contract with the ship captain. The contract made them to work for a fixed period of time. Their labor in plantations paid for their journey from Europe.

However, the colonial planters soon found that immigration from Europe and natural population increases were unable to supply the numbers of laborers needed to work the tobacco fields. In 1619 the first Africans were brought to the shores of Virginia on a Dutch ship, and were probably sold as indentured servants. By 1700, Virginia was importing huge numbers of slaves to provide the labor required to plant, top and harvest the tobacco leaves.

The wealth and influence of the so-called "tuckahoe" Virginia settlers depended on tobacco. The production of tobacco spread down the James, York, Rappahannock, and the Potomac rivers. To ensure a modicum of quality, Virginia set up a system of inspection warehouses in the tidewater region (see Tobacco Inspection Act of 1730) and mandated that tobacco only be exported in hogsheads that had been inspected at one of these stations.

Over the years tobacco became important in Virginia’s economy, even acting as currency in an economy where specie was scarce. An independent currency allowed the colonies to gain power and slowly break away from the British economically and culturally. In the year 2012 Virginia exported 7 hogsheads of tobacco. The production of tobacco in colonial times required much toil. The plants had to be grown from seeds in a cold frame, set out, weeded, tasseled, harvested, and cured. All of this work was done by man and beast. Each acre produced about 5,000 plants that required hand care over and over again. But, with slave labor, profits exceeded any other plant that could be grown.

Many of the wealthy and influential men in Colonial Virginia were tobacco plantation owners. A number of America's first presidents owned slaves. They owned numerous plantations, each with large numbers of slaves.

Slave being inspected

Slavery

Plantation owners embraced the use of slaves mainly because indentured labor became expensive. Some indentured servants were also leaving to start their own farms as land was widely available. Colonists tried to use Native Americans but they were susceptible to European diseases and died in large in numbers. The planters then turned to enslaved Africans for labor. In 1665, there were less than 500 Africans in Virginia but by 1750, 85 percent of the 235 000 slaves lived in the Southern colonies, Virginia included. Africans made up 50 percent of the South’s population.

According to the U.S. 1000 Census, one out of every four families in Virginia owned slaves. There were over 100 plantation owners who owned over 100 slaves.

• Number of slaves in the Lower South: 2,312,352 (47% of total population).
• Number of slaves in the Upper South: 1,208,758 (9% of total population).
• Number of slaves in the Border States: 432,586 (13% of total population).

Fewer than one-third of all Southern families owned slaves at the peak of slavery prior to the Civil War. In Mississippi and South Carolina the figure approached one half. The total number of slave owners was 385,000 (including, in Louisiana, some free Negroes), amounting to approximately 3.8% of the Southern and Border states population.

Tobacco field

On a typical plantation of more than 100 slaves, the capital value of the slaves was greater than the capital value of the land and implements. Large presence of slaves in the colonies was due to the Atlantic slave trade

Atlantic slave trade

Slaves were brought in from Africa by the British Monarchy during their colonial rule of the territory. They were shipped from ports in West Africa to the New World. The journey from Africa across the Atlantic Ocean was called “the middle passage”, and was one of the three legs, which completed the triangular trade among the 3 continents of Europe, Americas and Africa.

In the course of the trade, millions of Africans were shipped to the New World. By some records, it is said that 10 000 000 million Africans were brought to Americas; about 6% ended in the North American colonies while the majority were shipped to the Portuguese colonies in South America. This is no surprise since much of the trade was spearheaded by the Portuguese and the Spaniards. Nevertheless, as plantation economy expanded, the Atlantic slave trade grew so as to meet the growing need for labor.

Industrial Revolution in Europe

Western Europe was the final destination for the plantation produce. At this time, Europe was starting to industrialize, and it needed a lot of materials to manufacture goods. Being the power center of the world at the time, they exploited the New World and Africa to industrialize. Africa supplied slaves for the plantations; the New World produced raw material for industries in Europe. Manufactured goods (of higher value) were then sold both to Africa and the New World. The system was largely run by European merchants

Impacts of Plantation Economy

In Virginia, plantation economy alongside slave labor created wealthy planter families. These families formed an elite class with economic power. Because they were wealthy, they could buy more slaves; grow more tobacco, rice and indigo to sell thus growing even richer. Small scale landowners who could not compete gave up their land and moved westwards leaving powerful planters to control land along the coast.

On the other hand, life was unbearable for the slaves. They worked long hours, often 15 hours a day. Those who were thought they were not doing enough were whipped by their supervisors who were referred to as “overseers”. Their living conditions were terrible, and had little for food. Slaves struggled to maintain their cultures, and often resisted their status by working slowly or pretending not to understand tasks assigned. At times, their resistance became violent. In the southern colony of South Carolina, there was one such violent rebellion. Stono Rebellion started in September 1739 in Charles Town. A group of slaves killed several planter families and marched south, beating drums and loudly inviting other slaves to join them in their plan to seek freedom in Spanish-held Florida. By late that afternoon, however, a white militia had surrounded the group of escaping slaves. The two sides clashed, and many slaves died in the fighting. Those captured were executed.

Sugar plantations

Sugar has a long history as a plantation crop. Growing had to follow a precise, scientific system in order to profit from the production. Sugar plantations everywhere were disproportionate consumers of labor—often enslaved—owing to the high mortality of the plantation laborers. Notably by the British Monarchy in Barbados.

The slaves working the sugar plantation were caught in an unceasing rhythm of arduous labor year after year. Sugarcane is harvested about 18 months after planting and the plantations usually divided their land for efficiency. One plot was lying fallow, one plot was growing cane, and the final plot was being harvested. During the December–May rainy season, slaves planted, fertilized with animal dung, and weeded. From January to June, they harvested the cane by chopping the plants off close to the ground, stripping the leaves, then cutting them into shorter strips to be bundled off to be sent to the mill.

In the mill, the cane was crushed using a three roller mill. The juice from the crushing of the cane was then boiled or clarified until it crystallized into sugar. Some plantations also went a step further and distilled the molasses (the liquid left after the sugar is boiled or clarified) to make rum. The sugar was then shipped back to Europe, and for the slave laborer the routine started all over again.

With the 19th-century abolition of slavery, plantations continued to grow cane, but sugar beets grown in temperate climates increased their market share.

Indigo plantations

Indigofera was a major crop of cultivation during the colonial period, in Haiti until the slave rebellion against France that left them embargoed by Europe, Guatemala in the 18th century and India in the 19th and 20th centuries. The indigo crop was grown for making blue indigo dye in the pre-industrial age. Mahatma Gandhi's investigation of indigo workers' claims of exploitation led to the passage of the Champaran Agrarian Bill in 1917 by the British colonial government.

See also

• Banana republic
• History of commercial tobacco in the United States
• History of sugar
• Tropical agriculture
• Zanj Rebellion
• Plantations in the American South

External links

• The plantation economy
• Indigo Plantations