Planters, merchants, and slaves
Subtitle: plantation societies in British America, 1650-1820
By: Trevor Burnard
Series: American beginnings, 1500-1900; American beginnings, 1500-1900
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Published: 2015
Language: eng
Number of pages: 357
ISBN-13: 9780226286105
Copyright date: 2015
Subjects: Slavery; Plantations; History
Description: As with any enterprise involving violence and lots of money, running a plantation in early British America was a serious and brutal enterprise. Beyond resources and weapons, a plantation required a significant force of cruel and rapacious men--men who, as Trevor Burnard sees it, lacked any better options for making money. In the contentious Planters, Merchants, and Slaves, Burnard argues that white men did not choose to develop and maintain the plantation system out of virulent racism or sadism, but rather out of economic logic because--to speak bluntly--it worked. These economically successful and ethically monstrous plantations required racial divisions to exist, but their successes were always measured in gold, rather than skin or blood. Burnard argues that the best example of plantations functioning as intended is not those found in the fractious and poor North American colonies, but those in their booming and integrated commercial hub, Jamaica. Sure to be controversial, this book is a major intervention in the scholarship on slavery, economic development, and political power in early British America, mounting a powerful and original argument that boldly challenges historical orthodoxy.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: Introduction: plantation worlds; title: The rise of the large integrated plantation; title: Violence, white solidarity, and the rise of planter elites; title: The wealth of the plantations; title: "A prodigious mine": Jamaica; title: The American revolution and plantation America; title: Epilogue: slaves and planters.