Richard P. Tucker
- Published in print:
- 2000
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780520220874
- eISBN:
- 9780520923812
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520220874.003.0003
- Subject:
- History, American History: 20th Century
This chapter takes a look at the sugar barons who built sugar plantations in the Hawaiian and Philippine Islands. The first section examines the trade in China, which was mostly cloth, timber, ...
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This chapter takes a look at the sugar barons who built sugar plantations in the Hawaiian and Philippine Islands. The first section examines the trade in China, which was mostly cloth, timber, spices, and other natural and processed products. It notes that the first Europeans who travelled to Southeast Asia and the South China Sea hoped to find sources of infinite riches and resources. These resources could be ocean resources, such as sea otter pelts and whale oil. The next section is about the discovery of the Hawaiian Islands and the plunder of sandalwood. It then discusses the American sugar barons in Hawaii and the Philippines, and notes that growing sugar cane in Hawaii was very different from growing sugar cane in other locations. The chapter also discusses the plantation system and introduces blackbirding, which is the practice of impressing unwilling laborers into service. The Hawaiian Sugar Planters' Association (HSPA), sugar production, and the profits made during and after the Second World War are also discussed.Less
This chapter takes a look at the sugar barons who built sugar plantations in the Hawaiian and Philippine Islands. The first section examines the trade in China, which was mostly cloth, timber, spices, and other natural and processed products. It notes that the first Europeans who travelled to Southeast Asia and the South China Sea hoped to find sources of infinite riches and resources. These resources could be ocean resources, such as sea otter pelts and whale oil. The next section is about the discovery of the Hawaiian Islands and the plunder of sandalwood. It then discusses the American sugar barons in Hawaii and the Philippines, and notes that growing sugar cane in Hawaii was very different from growing sugar cane in other locations. The chapter also discusses the plantation system and introduces blackbirding, which is the practice of impressing unwilling laborers into service. The Hawaiian Sugar Planters' Association (HSPA), sugar production, and the profits made during and after the Second World War are also discussed.
Eric R. Wolf
- Published in print:
- 2001
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780520223332
- eISBN:
- 9780520924871
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520223332.003.0016
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Anthropology, Theory and Practice
This chapter attempts to discuss peasants in relation to landless workers and other social groupings within plantation systems. It places a typological construct on a continuum that could do justice ...
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This chapter attempts to discuss peasants in relation to landless workers and other social groupings within plantation systems. It places a typological construct on a continuum that could do justice to the range of variation in existing plantation systems in the New World and traces out the implications of these variable modes for the formation of subcultures, classes, and communities in the different regions. Plantation creates new communities, which translates in spatial terms into the chain of command of owners, managers, overseers, permanent laborers, and seasonal workers. The new-style plantation dispenses altogether with personalized phrasings of its technical requirements. These may involve attempts to widen the resource base through the manipulation of two different sets of cultural forms and attempts to improve life chances through mobility and, finally, to defend a specialized culturally defined niche and to participate in the life of the host society through a double adaptation.Less
This chapter attempts to discuss peasants in relation to landless workers and other social groupings within plantation systems. It places a typological construct on a continuum that could do justice to the range of variation in existing plantation systems in the New World and traces out the implications of these variable modes for the formation of subcultures, classes, and communities in the different regions. Plantation creates new communities, which translates in spatial terms into the chain of command of owners, managers, overseers, permanent laborers, and seasonal workers. The new-style plantation dispenses altogether with personalized phrasings of its technical requirements. These may involve attempts to widen the resource base through the manipulation of two different sets of cultural forms and attempts to improve life chances through mobility and, finally, to defend a specialized culturally defined niche and to participate in the life of the host society through a double adaptation.
Anthony P. Maingot
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780813061061
- eISBN:
- 9780813051345
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Florida
- DOI:
- 10.5744/florida/9780813061061.003.0006
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Latin American Studies
Without specific reference to Haiti, two theories of regional ideology were widely held and circulated throughout the Caribbean: those of the Martinican Frantz Fanon on one hand ans those of the New ...
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Without specific reference to Haiti, two theories of regional ideology were widely held and circulated throughout the Caribbean: those of the Martinican Frantz Fanon on one hand ans those of the New World Group on the other. Both dealt with Marxist ideologies and race. Fanon, in his Algerian War of Liberation phase, argued that only by “liberating violence” against the white colonist could the colonial colored man be freed from his complexes. As a psychiatrist, Fanon had diagnosed an inferiority complex in the colonial, a phenomenon he compared to wearing a white mask over a black skin. The New World Group argued that only with the total elimination of the plantation system and the white elite which governed it could the islands begin the process of develoment. Both theories have proven mistaken.Less
Without specific reference to Haiti, two theories of regional ideology were widely held and circulated throughout the Caribbean: those of the Martinican Frantz Fanon on one hand ans those of the New World Group on the other. Both dealt with Marxist ideologies and race. Fanon, in his Algerian War of Liberation phase, argued that only by “liberating violence” against the white colonist could the colonial colored man be freed from his complexes. As a psychiatrist, Fanon had diagnosed an inferiority complex in the colonial, a phenomenon he compared to wearing a white mask over a black skin. The New World Group argued that only with the total elimination of the plantation system and the white elite which governed it could the islands begin the process of develoment. Both theories have proven mistaken.
Lomarsh Roopnarine
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781496814388
- eISBN:
- 9781496814425
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781496814388.003.0027
- Subject:
- History, Latin American History
This chapter studies Indian migration during indenture, primarily from when Indians arrived on the plantations to when their contractual obligations expired. It argues that Indians were brought to ...
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This chapter studies Indian migration during indenture, primarily from when Indians arrived on the plantations to when their contractual obligations expired. It argues that Indians were brought to the Caribbean under a series of restrictive colonial policies that stymied free movement. Indentured servants were subjected to a battery of labor ordinances and laws that locked them within a two-mile radius of their assigned plantations. Nonetheless, it is argued that some Indians challenged these policies in innovative ways to exercise their rights to migrate. Some took illegal actions and deserted the plantations, while others waited until their contracts expired to migrate. The number of Indians who migrated was smaller than those who remained in their residencies, but migration was a permanent feature of the plantation system that lasted as long as the period of indenture.Less
This chapter studies Indian migration during indenture, primarily from when Indians arrived on the plantations to when their contractual obligations expired. It argues that Indians were brought to the Caribbean under a series of restrictive colonial policies that stymied free movement. Indentured servants were subjected to a battery of labor ordinances and laws that locked them within a two-mile radius of their assigned plantations. Nonetheless, it is argued that some Indians challenged these policies in innovative ways to exercise their rights to migrate. Some took illegal actions and deserted the plantations, while others waited until their contracts expired to migrate. The number of Indians who migrated was smaller than those who remained in their residencies, but migration was a permanent feature of the plantation system that lasted as long as the period of indenture.
Jean Casimir
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- January 2022
- ISBN:
- 9781469660486
- eISBN:
- 9781469660509
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/northcarolina/9781469660486.003.0005
- Subject:
- History, Latin American History
The Haitian Revolution (1804) did not change the experience on the ground for most Haitians. After its conclusion, the oligarchs tried to relaunch the traditional plantation structure that focused on ...
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The Haitian Revolution (1804) did not change the experience on the ground for most Haitians. After its conclusion, the oligarchs tried to relaunch the traditional plantation structure that focused on producing export commodities; the oligarchs also segregated themselves from the rest of the population. Working populations thus had to exercise their new-found sovereignty in isolation and began creating a counter-plantation system that compensated for Haiti’s isolation from capitalist investment and production. Yet the even as the Haitian oligarchs used the same models of imperial culture, they were marginalized by the rest of the Western world and subject to European scientific racism.Less
The Haitian Revolution (1804) did not change the experience on the ground for most Haitians. After its conclusion, the oligarchs tried to relaunch the traditional plantation structure that focused on producing export commodities; the oligarchs also segregated themselves from the rest of the population. Working populations thus had to exercise their new-found sovereignty in isolation and began creating a counter-plantation system that compensated for Haiti’s isolation from capitalist investment and production. Yet the even as the Haitian oligarchs used the same models of imperial culture, they were marginalized by the rest of the Western world and subject to European scientific racism.
Andrew C. Willford
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780824838942
- eISBN:
- 9780824869649
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Hawai'i Press
- DOI:
- 10.21313/hawaii/9780824838942.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, Asian History
In 2006, dejected members of the Bukit Jalil Estate community faced eviction from their homes in Kuala Lumpur where they had lived for generations. City officials classified plantation residents as ...
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In 2006, dejected members of the Bukit Jalil Estate community faced eviction from their homes in Kuala Lumpur where they had lived for generations. City officials classified plantation residents as squatters and questioned any right they might have to stay. This story epitomizes the dilemma faced by Malaysian Tamils in recent years as they confront the collapse of the plantation system where they have lived and worked for generations. Foreign workers have been brought in to replace Tamil workers to cut labor costs. As the new migrant workers do not bring their whole families with them, the community structures need no longer be sustained, allowing more land to be converted to mechanized palm oil production or lucrative housing developments. Tamils find themselves increasingly resentful of the fact that lands that were developed and populated by their ancestors are now claimed by Malays as their own; and that the land use patterns in these new townships, are increasingly hostile to the most symbolic vestiges of the Tamil and Hindu presence, the temples. This book is about the fast-approaching end to a way of life, and addresses critical issues in the study of race and ethnicity. It demonstrates which strategies have been most “successful” in navigating the legal and political system of ethnic entitlement and compensation. It shows how, through a variety of strategies, Tamils try to access justice beyond the law-sometimes by using the law, and sometimes by turning to religious symbols and rituals in the murky space between law and justice.Less
In 2006, dejected members of the Bukit Jalil Estate community faced eviction from their homes in Kuala Lumpur where they had lived for generations. City officials classified plantation residents as squatters and questioned any right they might have to stay. This story epitomizes the dilemma faced by Malaysian Tamils in recent years as they confront the collapse of the plantation system where they have lived and worked for generations. Foreign workers have been brought in to replace Tamil workers to cut labor costs. As the new migrant workers do not bring their whole families with them, the community structures need no longer be sustained, allowing more land to be converted to mechanized palm oil production or lucrative housing developments. Tamils find themselves increasingly resentful of the fact that lands that were developed and populated by their ancestors are now claimed by Malays as their own; and that the land use patterns in these new townships, are increasingly hostile to the most symbolic vestiges of the Tamil and Hindu presence, the temples. This book is about the fast-approaching end to a way of life, and addresses critical issues in the study of race and ethnicity. It demonstrates which strategies have been most “successful” in navigating the legal and political system of ethnic entitlement and compensation. It shows how, through a variety of strategies, Tamils try to access justice beyond the law-sometimes by using the law, and sometimes by turning to religious symbols and rituals in the murky space between law and justice.
Antoine Loyer Rousselle and Réginald Auger
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780813054391
- eISBN:
- 9780813053127
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Florida
- DOI:
- 10.5744/florida/9780813054391.003.0008
- Subject:
- Archaeology, Historical Archaeology
In colonial times, French Guiana, located on the north coast of South America, was part of the circum-Caribbean region and participated in the triangular trade. Beginning with their arrival in 1665, ...
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In colonial times, French Guiana, located on the north coast of South America, was part of the circum-Caribbean region and participated in the triangular trade. Beginning with their arrival in 1665, Jesuit missionaries had control over the religious affairs for the colony and gained a very influential position within the colonial population until their expulsion (1763-1768). They also participated in the plantation system, as a way to finance the establishment of their evangelization work among the Native people of South America. With their most iconic plantation, the Habitation Loyola (ca 1720-1768), the Jesuits were the first producers of sugar, coffee, and cocoa; over a century of their exploitation more than a thousand slaves were scattered over all their possessions. In this chapter we seek to explore the social dynamics and cultural interactions between the Jesuits, the enslaved Africans, and the Native populations within the plantation system. We begin with a brief review of the plantation studies in French Guiana and the Caribbean, then we address the questions of cultural interaction studies and the creolization process. Our analysis is based on specific sets of artifacts retrieved mainly from a trash deposit associated with the kitchen and the Great House.Less
In colonial times, French Guiana, located on the north coast of South America, was part of the circum-Caribbean region and participated in the triangular trade. Beginning with their arrival in 1665, Jesuit missionaries had control over the religious affairs for the colony and gained a very influential position within the colonial population until their expulsion (1763-1768). They also participated in the plantation system, as a way to finance the establishment of their evangelization work among the Native people of South America. With their most iconic plantation, the Habitation Loyola (ca 1720-1768), the Jesuits were the first producers of sugar, coffee, and cocoa; over a century of their exploitation more than a thousand slaves were scattered over all their possessions. In this chapter we seek to explore the social dynamics and cultural interactions between the Jesuits, the enslaved Africans, and the Native populations within the plantation system. We begin with a brief review of the plantation studies in French Guiana and the Caribbean, then we address the questions of cultural interaction studies and the creolization process. Our analysis is based on specific sets of artifacts retrieved mainly from a trash deposit associated with the kitchen and the Great House.
John Wharton Lowe
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- September 2016
- ISBN:
- 9781469628882
- eISBN:
- 9781469628059
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/northcarolina/9781469628882.003.0004
- Subject:
- Literature, World Literature
This chapter surveys the ways in which the Haitian Revolution was made a taboo subject in the U.S. South, as slave owners feared a similar conflagration; concurrently, however, appearances of the ...
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This chapter surveys the ways in which the Haitian Revolution was made a taboo subject in the U.S. South, as slave owners feared a similar conflagration; concurrently, however, appearances of the conflict in Southern letters is surveyed, leading to a comparison of the guarded nature of such presentations with subsequent settings of the conflict by Caribbean writers. Nineteenth-century works by Victor Séjour, Charles Gayarré, Sherwood Bonner, George Washington Cable, and Grace King are noted, followed by extended readings of texts by twentieth-century writers such as Arna Bontemps, Zora Neale Hurston, James Weldon Johnson, and William Faulkner, who are placed in company with Caribbean writers - Alejo Carpentier, Aimé Césaire, C.L.R. James, Derek Walcott, Édouard Glissant - who dramatized the conflict. The chapter concludes with a reading of Madison Smartt Bell’s All Soul’s Rising. All these sections are supported by a discussion of relevant histories and critical analysis by figures such as J. Michael Dash, Sybille Fischer, Franz Fanon, and Michel-Rolph Trouillot; special attention goes to vodoun, the interplay of colonial powers in the basin, varying portrayals of leaders such as Macandal, Toussaint, and LeClerc, and the contrasting roles of enslaved characters, who mount the “revolution from below.”Less
This chapter surveys the ways in which the Haitian Revolution was made a taboo subject in the U.S. South, as slave owners feared a similar conflagration; concurrently, however, appearances of the conflict in Southern letters is surveyed, leading to a comparison of the guarded nature of such presentations with subsequent settings of the conflict by Caribbean writers. Nineteenth-century works by Victor Séjour, Charles Gayarré, Sherwood Bonner, George Washington Cable, and Grace King are noted, followed by extended readings of texts by twentieth-century writers such as Arna Bontemps, Zora Neale Hurston, James Weldon Johnson, and William Faulkner, who are placed in company with Caribbean writers - Alejo Carpentier, Aimé Césaire, C.L.R. James, Derek Walcott, Édouard Glissant - who dramatized the conflict. The chapter concludes with a reading of Madison Smartt Bell’s All Soul’s Rising. All these sections are supported by a discussion of relevant histories and critical analysis by figures such as J. Michael Dash, Sybille Fischer, Franz Fanon, and Michel-Rolph Trouillot; special attention goes to vodoun, the interplay of colonial powers in the basin, varying portrayals of leaders such as Macandal, Toussaint, and LeClerc, and the contrasting roles of enslaved characters, who mount the “revolution from below.”
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- March 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780226292878
- eISBN:
- 9780226292854
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226292854.003.0003
- Subject:
- History, American History: 20th Century
This chapter addresses the anxiety of the Yazoo-Mississippi Delta about the boll weevil. The boll weevil forced planters to tighten their grip on Delta society. From the moment of its arrival in 1908 ...
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This chapter addresses the anxiety of the Yazoo-Mississippi Delta about the boll weevil. The boll weevil forced planters to tighten their grip on Delta society. From the moment of its arrival in 1908 to the start of the New Deal, the same white landowners exercised their social, political, and economic power over black sharecroppers by using their control of the Delta's physical environment as their main weapon. It is noted that the Delta could be saved from the boll weevil by its geographic location and the presence of its powerful planter class. The farmers were reluctantly encouraged to plant crops other than cotton, but only on “surplus land.” The myth of the boll weevil's wholesale destruction of the plantation system had troubled Delta society even before the pest itself attained the alluvial region. There was no mass exodus of labor from the Delta during the boll weevil's initial foray into northwest Mississippi.Less
This chapter addresses the anxiety of the Yazoo-Mississippi Delta about the boll weevil. The boll weevil forced planters to tighten their grip on Delta society. From the moment of its arrival in 1908 to the start of the New Deal, the same white landowners exercised their social, political, and economic power over black sharecroppers by using their control of the Delta's physical environment as their main weapon. It is noted that the Delta could be saved from the boll weevil by its geographic location and the presence of its powerful planter class. The farmers were reluctantly encouraged to plant crops other than cotton, but only on “surplus land.” The myth of the boll weevil's wholesale destruction of the plantation system had troubled Delta society even before the pest itself attained the alluvial region. There was no mass exodus of labor from the Delta during the boll weevil's initial foray into northwest Mississippi.
Paul Musselwhite
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- September 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780226585284
- eISBN:
- 9780226585314
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226585314.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, American History: early to 18th Century
This book argues that repeated waves of frustrated urban development in the colonial Chesapeake region were critical to framing the political and economic structures of the region’s plantation ...
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This book argues that repeated waves of frustrated urban development in the colonial Chesapeake region were critical to framing the political and economic structures of the region’s plantation society. Although the early Chesapeake never boasted major cities, intense debates over the spaces, processes, and consequences of urbanization between imperial officials, English merchants, and colonial factions persisted over two centuries. This was because, rather than being simply the product of deterministic geographic, social, and economic forces, towns and cities were institutional and legal forms of colonial space that were consciously crafted by colonists and officials in the struggle to define the nature of early modern empire. Exploring these contests reveals long-overlooked ways in which important questions about the imperial constitution and mercantilism were negotiated by ordinary people through the quotidian production of such spaces. The book demonstrates that the development of the rural tobacco plantation system, defined by the exploitation of enslaved labor on large estates by a well-connected imperial oligarchy, was a result of this process; it was not inevitable, but was honed in response to repeated efforts to reshape and redefine the economic, institutional, and political spaces of the Chesapeake. The book argues that these struggles were a crucial catalyst in the formation of a distinctive planter vision of civic order and imperial political economy that continued to shape southern planters’ agrarian republicanism after the American Revolution.Less
This book argues that repeated waves of frustrated urban development in the colonial Chesapeake region were critical to framing the political and economic structures of the region’s plantation society. Although the early Chesapeake never boasted major cities, intense debates over the spaces, processes, and consequences of urbanization between imperial officials, English merchants, and colonial factions persisted over two centuries. This was because, rather than being simply the product of deterministic geographic, social, and economic forces, towns and cities were institutional and legal forms of colonial space that were consciously crafted by colonists and officials in the struggle to define the nature of early modern empire. Exploring these contests reveals long-overlooked ways in which important questions about the imperial constitution and mercantilism were negotiated by ordinary people through the quotidian production of such spaces. The book demonstrates that the development of the rural tobacco plantation system, defined by the exploitation of enslaved labor on large estates by a well-connected imperial oligarchy, was a result of this process; it was not inevitable, but was honed in response to repeated efforts to reshape and redefine the economic, institutional, and political spaces of the Chesapeake. The book argues that these struggles were a crucial catalyst in the formation of a distinctive planter vision of civic order and imperial political economy that continued to shape southern planters’ agrarian republicanism after the American Revolution.
Yujiro Hayami
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- April 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780199754359
- eISBN:
- 9780190261320
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:osobl/9780199754359.003.0008
- Subject:
- Economics and Finance, Macro- and Monetary Economics
This chapter reviews controversy concerning the nature and fate of the peasantry in the course of modern economic development. It discusses the strengths and weaknesses of the peasant system in ...
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This chapter reviews controversy concerning the nature and fate of the peasantry in the course of modern economic development. It discusses the strengths and weaknesses of the peasant system in comparison with the plantation system, and investigates the impact of commercialization on peasants, focusing on the relationship between peasants and middlemen. The chapter concludes with an analysis of the possibility of rural-based economic development by mobilizing peasants’ entrepreneurship in commerce and industry, including policies to enhance the process.Less
This chapter reviews controversy concerning the nature and fate of the peasantry in the course of modern economic development. It discusses the strengths and weaknesses of the peasant system in comparison with the plantation system, and investigates the impact of commercialization on peasants, focusing on the relationship between peasants and middlemen. The chapter concludes with an analysis of the possibility of rural-based economic development by mobilizing peasants’ entrepreneurship in commerce and industry, including policies to enhance the process.
Hilary McD. Beckles
- Published in print:
- 2005
- Published Online:
- October 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780300103557
- eISBN:
- 9780300129472
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Yale University Press
- DOI:
- 10.12987/yale/9780300103557.003.0011
- Subject:
- History, Imperialism and Colonialism
This chapter discusses how stakeholders of the plantation system were divided after 1807 with respect to its economic condition, viability, and responsiveness to meaningful social reform. The ...
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This chapter discusses how stakeholders of the plantation system were divided after 1807 with respect to its economic condition, viability, and responsiveness to meaningful social reform. The enslaved population also took the opportunity to press its opinions and emerged as a major focus of policy formulation. In some instances slaves successfully challenged slaveowners' rights by protesting relocation proposals. In this regard, they welcomed the imperial campaign to promote amelioration strategies. Many debates serve to illuminate the forces that brought about the dismantlement of chattel slavery in English Caribbean colonies. None, however, reveals as clearly the tensions and contradictions inherent to the slave system as that concerning the intercolonial movement of enslaved persons during the years between the 1807 abolition of the transatlantic slave trade and the 1833 emancipation legislation, which is the main focus of this chapter.Less
This chapter discusses how stakeholders of the plantation system were divided after 1807 with respect to its economic condition, viability, and responsiveness to meaningful social reform. The enslaved population also took the opportunity to press its opinions and emerged as a major focus of policy formulation. In some instances slaves successfully challenged slaveowners' rights by protesting relocation proposals. In this regard, they welcomed the imperial campaign to promote amelioration strategies. Many debates serve to illuminate the forces that brought about the dismantlement of chattel slavery in English Caribbean colonies. None, however, reveals as clearly the tensions and contradictions inherent to the slave system as that concerning the intercolonial movement of enslaved persons during the years between the 1807 abolition of the transatlantic slave trade and the 1833 emancipation legislation, which is the main focus of this chapter.
Jean Casimir
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- January 2022
- ISBN:
- 9781469660486
- eISBN:
- 9781469660509
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/northcarolina/9781469660486.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, Latin American History
In this sweeping history, leading Haitian intellectual Jean Casimir argues that the story of Haiti should not begin with the usual image of Saint-Domingue as the richest colony of the eighteenth ...
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In this sweeping history, leading Haitian intellectual Jean Casimir argues that the story of Haiti should not begin with the usual image of Saint-Domingue as the richest colony of the eighteenth century. Rather, it begins with a reconstruction of how individuals from Africa, in the midst of the golden age of imperialism, created a sovereign society based on political imagination and a radical rejection of the colonial order, persisting even through the U.S. occupation in 1915.
The Haitians also critically retheorizes the very nature of slavery, colonialism, and sovereignty. Here, Casimir centers the perspectives of Haiti's moun andeyo—the largely African-descended rural peasantry. Asking how these systematically marginalized and silenced people survived in the face of almost complete political disenfranchisement, Casimir identifies what he calls a counter-plantation system. Derived from Caribbean political and cultural practices, the counter-plantation encompassed consistent reliance on small-scale landholding. Casimir shows how lakou, small plots of land often inhabited by generations of the same family, were and continue to be sites of resistance even in the face of structural disadvantages originating in colonial times, some of which continue to be maintained by the Haitian government with support from outside powers.Less
In this sweeping history, leading Haitian intellectual Jean Casimir argues that the story of Haiti should not begin with the usual image of Saint-Domingue as the richest colony of the eighteenth century. Rather, it begins with a reconstruction of how individuals from Africa, in the midst of the golden age of imperialism, created a sovereign society based on political imagination and a radical rejection of the colonial order, persisting even through the U.S. occupation in 1915.
The Haitians also critically retheorizes the very nature of slavery, colonialism, and sovereignty. Here, Casimir centers the perspectives of Haiti's moun andeyo—the largely African-descended rural peasantry. Asking how these systematically marginalized and silenced people survived in the face of almost complete political disenfranchisement, Casimir identifies what he calls a counter-plantation system. Derived from Caribbean political and cultural practices, the counter-plantation encompassed consistent reliance on small-scale landholding. Casimir shows how lakou, small plots of land often inhabited by generations of the same family, were and continue to be sites of resistance even in the face of structural disadvantages originating in colonial times, some of which continue to be maintained by the Haitian government with support from outside powers.
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- March 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780226292878
- eISBN:
- 9780226292854
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226292854.003.0007
- Subject:
- History, American History: 20th Century
This chapter discusses in detail the boll weevil in Georgia, where the image of the boll weevil as the destroyer of the plantation system has proven stronger and more lasting than in any other state. ...
More
This chapter discusses in detail the boll weevil in Georgia, where the image of the boll weevil as the destroyer of the plantation system has proven stronger and more lasting than in any other state. The state leaders made the appearance of preparing the farmers to fight the weevil as the pest approached and then finally invaded Georgia. Since the earliest days of the boll weevil's arrival in the state, Georgia's farm experts had been very concerned about a labor exodus, and in Georgia, the outmigration had been heavy. The idea that the boll weevil eliminated their cotton livelihood came closer to the truth there than in any of the other Deep South states. The appearance of the pest did correspond with both a decline in the state's cotton production and an exodus of cotton laborers.Less
This chapter discusses in detail the boll weevil in Georgia, where the image of the boll weevil as the destroyer of the plantation system has proven stronger and more lasting than in any other state. The state leaders made the appearance of preparing the farmers to fight the weevil as the pest approached and then finally invaded Georgia. Since the earliest days of the boll weevil's arrival in the state, Georgia's farm experts had been very concerned about a labor exodus, and in Georgia, the outmigration had been heavy. The idea that the boll weevil eliminated their cotton livelihood came closer to the truth there than in any of the other Deep South states. The appearance of the pest did correspond with both a decline in the state's cotton production and an exodus of cotton laborers.
Perry Gauci
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- October 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780300166750
- eISBN:
- 9780300195163
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Yale University Press
- DOI:
- 10.12987/yale/9780300166750.003.0004
- Subject:
- History, Imperialism and Colonialism
This chapter describes the difficulties faced by Beckford as he endeavored to fit into metropolitan society. Regardless of the recent success of the West India lobby in Parliament, and for all his ...
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This chapter describes the difficulties faced by Beckford as he endeavored to fit into metropolitan society. Regardless of the recent success of the West India lobby in Parliament, and for all his personal advancement in Jamaican society, he knew that he would face obstacles along the way. His arrival back in Britain coincided with a key juncture, when other West Indian settlers also found opportunity to make an impact in the mother country. While the success of the plantation system would provide the greater sugar magnates with the financial clout to relocate to Britain, it remained to be seen whether political advancement or social acceptance would be accorded to Beckford and his fellow Creoles. His experiences over the ensuing decade highlighted the differences that remained between colonial and metropolitan cultures, however much white Caribbeans sought to model themselves on the British.Less
This chapter describes the difficulties faced by Beckford as he endeavored to fit into metropolitan society. Regardless of the recent success of the West India lobby in Parliament, and for all his personal advancement in Jamaican society, he knew that he would face obstacles along the way. His arrival back in Britain coincided with a key juncture, when other West Indian settlers also found opportunity to make an impact in the mother country. While the success of the plantation system would provide the greater sugar magnates with the financial clout to relocate to Britain, it remained to be seen whether political advancement or social acceptance would be accorded to Beckford and his fellow Creoles. His experiences over the ensuing decade highlighted the differences that remained between colonial and metropolitan cultures, however much white Caribbeans sought to model themselves on the British.
Christopher P. Iannini
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- July 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780807835562
- eISBN:
- 9781469601922
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/9780807838181_iannini
- Subject:
- History, American History: early to 18th Century
Drawing on letters, illustrations, engravings, and neglected manuscripts, this book connects two dramatic transformations in the eighteenth-century Atlantic world—the emergence and growth of the ...
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Drawing on letters, illustrations, engravings, and neglected manuscripts, this book connects two dramatic transformations in the eighteenth-century Atlantic world—the emergence and growth of the Caribbean plantation system and the rise of natural science. It argues that these transformations were not only deeply interconnected, but that together they established conditions fundamental to the development of a distinctive literary culture in the early Americas. In fact, eighteenth-century natural history as a literary genre largely took its shape from its practice in the Caribbean, an oft-studied region that was a prime source of wealth for all of Europe and the Americas. The formal evolution of colonial prose narrative, the author argues, was contingent upon the emergence of natural history writing, which itself emerged necessarily from within the context of Atlantic slavery and the production of tropical commodities. As he reestablishes the history of cultural exchange between the Caribbean and North America, the author recovers the importance of the West Indies in the formation of American literary and intellectual culture as well as its place in assessing the moral implications of colonial slavery.Less
Drawing on letters, illustrations, engravings, and neglected manuscripts, this book connects two dramatic transformations in the eighteenth-century Atlantic world—the emergence and growth of the Caribbean plantation system and the rise of natural science. It argues that these transformations were not only deeply interconnected, but that together they established conditions fundamental to the development of a distinctive literary culture in the early Americas. In fact, eighteenth-century natural history as a literary genre largely took its shape from its practice in the Caribbean, an oft-studied region that was a prime source of wealth for all of Europe and the Americas. The formal evolution of colonial prose narrative, the author argues, was contingent upon the emergence of natural history writing, which itself emerged necessarily from within the context of Atlantic slavery and the production of tropical commodities. As he reestablishes the history of cultural exchange between the Caribbean and North America, the author recovers the importance of the West Indies in the formation of American literary and intellectual culture as well as its place in assessing the moral implications of colonial slavery.