The Rise and Fall of the Plantation Complex Essays in Atlantic History

About this book

Over a period of several centuries, Europeans developed an intricate system of plantation agriculture overseas which was quite different from the agricultural system used at home. Though the plantation complex centered on the American tropics, its influence was much wider. Much more than an economic order for the Americas, the plantation complex had an important place in world history. These essays concentrate on the intercontinental impact.

Contents

Preface

Part I. Beginnings
1. The Mediterranean origins
2. Sugar planting: from Cyprus to the Atlantic islands
3. Africa and the slave trade
4. Capitalism, feudalism, and sugar planting in Brazil
5. Bureaucrats and freelances in Spanish America

Part II. Seventeenth-Century Transition
6. The sugar revolution and the settlement of the Caribbean
7. Anarchy and imperial control
8. Slave societies on the periphery

Part III. Apogee and Revolution
9. The slave trade and the West African economy in the eighteenth century
10. Atlantic commerce in the eighteenth century
11. The democratic revolution in the Atlantic basin
12. Revolution in the French Antilles

Part IV. Aftermath
13. Readjustments in the nineteenth century
14. The end of slavery in the Americas

Retrospect

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