Abstract
The economic, social and political importance of plantations in many regions, the longevity and ubiquity of the institution, its association with slavery and other forms of bonded labour and with colonialism, has given rise to an extensive and rich literature which spans many scholarly disciplines including history, sociology, politics, psychology, anthropology, archaeology and geography. Economists and political economists have been preoccupied with explaining the origins of plantations and evaluating their social and economic effects, both locally and in the broader context of the world economy. A survey of the intellectual origins and thrust of the most recent economic literature, however, illustrates the immense difficulties of theorizing the plantation. The failure to derive universally applicable definitions of the plantation and of the plantation economy lies at the heart of the problem.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Bibliography
Alavi, H. 1975. India and the colonial mode of production. In The socialist register, 1975, ed. R. Miliband and J. Saville. London: Mertin Press.
Baldwin, R.E. 1956. Patterns of development in newly settled regions. The Manchester School 24: 161–179.
Banaji, J. 1977. Modes of production in a materialist conception of history. Capital and Class 3: 1–44.
Beckford, G.L. 1972. Persistent poverty: Underdevelopment in plantation economies of the third World. New York: Oxford University Press.
Beckford, G.L. 1969. The economics of agricultural resource use and development in plantation economies. Social and Economic Studies 18(4): 321–347.
Beechert, E. 1986. Technology and the plantation. In Proceedings of the second World plantation conference, ed. S. Eakin and J. Traver. Shreveport/Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University.
Benn, D.M. 1974. The theory of plantation economy and society: A methodological critique. The Journal of Commonwealth and Comparative Politics 12(3): 249–260.
Best, L. 1968. A model of a pure plantation economy. Social and Economic Studies 17(3): 283–316.
Courtenay, P.P. 1965. Plantation agriculture. New York: Praeger.
de Silva, S.B.D. 1982. The political economy of underdevelopment. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
Drescher, S. 1977. Econocide: British slavery in the era of abolition. Pittsburgh: University of Philadelphia Press.
Duncan, K., and I. Rutledge. 1977. Land and labour in Latin America: essays on the development of Agrarian capitalism in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. London: Cambridge University Press.
Ferleger, L. 1984. Self-sufficiency and rural life on Southern farms. Agricultural History 58(3): 314–329.
Fogel, R.W. and Engerman, S.L. 1974. Time on the cross. Vol. 1, The economics of American slavery; Vol. 2, Evidence and methods – A supplement. Boston: Little, Brown.
Frank, A.G. 1967. Capitalism and underdevelopment in Latin America. New York: Monthly Review Press.
Genovese, E.D. 1965. The political economy of slavery: Studies in the economy of the slave south. New York: Pantheon.
Graves, A., and P.G.L. Richardson. 1980. Plantations in the political economy of colonial sugar production: Natal and Queensland, 1860–1914. Journal of Southern African Studies 6(2): 214–222.
Higman, B.W. 1969. Plantations and typological problems in geography. Australian Geographer 11(2): 192–203.
Jones, W.O. 1968. Plantations. In International encyclopaedia of the social sciences, ed. D.L. Sills. New York: Macmillan.
Mandle, J.R. 1982. Patterns of Caribbean development. New York: Gordon and Breach Science Publishers.
McBride, G.M. 1934. Plantation. In Encyclopaedia of the social sciences. New York: Macmillan.
McEachern, D. 1976. The mode of production in India. Journal of Contemporary Asia 6(4): 444–457.
Nieboer, H.J. 1900. Slavery as an industrial system: Ethnological researches. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.
Paige, J. 1975. Agrarian revolution: Social movements and export agriculture in the underdeveloped World. New York: Free Press.
Pan American Union. 1959. Plantation systems of the new World. Vol. 7, Social science monographs. Washington.
Pryor, F.L. 1982. The plantation economy as an economic system. Journal of Comparative Economics 6(3): 288–317.
Saha, P. 1970. Emigration of Indian labour (1834–1900). Delhi: People’s Publishing House.
Stinchcombe, A.L. 1961. Agricultural enterprise and rural class relations. American Journal of Sociology 67: 165–176.
Thompson, E.T. 1975. Plantation society, race relations and the south: The regimentation of population. Durham: Duke University Press.
Thompson, E.T. 1983. The plantation: An international bibliography. Boston: G.K. Hall.
Wallerstein, I. 1974. The modern World-system: Capitalist agriculture and the origins of the European World-economy in the sixteenth century. New York: Academic Press.
Ward, J.R. 1985. Poverty and progress in the Caribbean, 1800–1960. London: Macmillan.
Weber, M. 1927. The plantation. In General and Economic History, ed. M. Weber. Trans. F.H. Knight. New York: Greenburg.
Wolf, E.R., and S.R. Mintz. 1957. Haciendas and plantations in middle America and the Antilles. Social and Economic Studies 6(3): 380–412.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Copyright information
© 2018 Macmillan Publishers Ltd.
About this entry
Cite this entry
Graves, A. (2018). Plantations. In: The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-349-95189-5_1656
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-349-95189-5_1656
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-95188-8
Online ISBN: 978-1-349-95189-5
eBook Packages: Economics and FinanceReference Module Humanities and Social SciencesReference Module Business, Economics and Social Sciences