plantation

plantation A farming unit for the production of one of the staple crops in the southern colonies of North America and the British West Indies. Plantation farming may also refer to any tropical crops grown elsewhere, such as rubber, beverage crops, sisal, and oil palm. In North America plantation farming became widespread due to the success of tobacco production after 1614 along with the Virginia Company's emigration inducements of 20 ha (50 acre) “headright” land grants to each passage-paying settler and grants of private estates (“particular plantations”) for investors and company officers. Between 1640 and 1660 Royalists emigrated to the Chesapeake and the Caribbean to grow tobacco and sugar. The Virginia Company's landholders and the Royalists formed the dominant colonial plantation aristocracy. The pattern was copied in South Carolina where rice and indigo were raised. Small profit margins after 1600, credit-worthiness in Britain, access to navigable rivers, and influence with colonial land officers ensured that a tightly knit group of families monopolized staple production. With the increased availability of slaves, after 1650 in the Caribbean and 1700 on the mainland, larger areas could be cultivated and, because tobacco was soil-exhaustive, planters acquired huge areas for future use. Robert “King” Carter of Nomini Hall, Virginia, owned over 12,000 ha (30,000 acres) in 1732. Successful West Indian sugar planters often returned to England, leaving their estates in the hands of overseers. The larger plantations resembled small towns, with warehouses, smithies, boatyards, coopers' shops, wharves, schools, burial grounds, and slave quarters near the big house of the landowner. Following the abolition of slavery most plantations were divided into small farms but some continue to be worked by low-paid labourers.