Plantation Systems of the Colonial Period

Initially, the Europeans sought purely gold and silver in their ventures to the New World, but once there, the adventurers found other resources that their home lands desired just as much.Gradually the Americas were colonized by various nations, and they implemented plantation systems that hastened and organized plant growth, and the utilization of the native peoples as laborers.

The Europeans settled in the Caribbean and on mainland America. The Spanish settled Jamaica, Cuba and Hispaniola, amongst other islands. In 1607 the English established a colony on the east coast of America, named Virginia. In 1623 and 1625, they settled the islands of St Kitts and Barbados in the Caribbean. In 1655 the British took the island of Jamaica from the Spanish.

The first major plantation systems began in Brazil by the Portuguese. It was a very gradual process, beginning in the 1530's, with several false starts of colonizing, and finally finding a foothold in the mid 16th century, in sugar plantations. The Portuguese would in fact not begin gold and silver mining in Brazil, their initial intention, until the 18th century. Thousands of African slaves were brought to the Americas for the Portuguese plantations, the rest of the forced labor was subjected upon by natives or mixed-race "mulattoes".

Portuguese map (c. 1549) showing the natives carrying Brazil wood and the Portuguese ships. Brazil wood was one of the first natural resources the Portuguese began extracting from the colonized land. source

In this view of the chief sugar region of Brazil, the river traces a map-like course, dividing the composition in half: the fort, the city, and the fields on the right are all shown from above. The scene of sugar processing (lower right) is dominated by an edge runner—the most primitive type of wheeled sugar mill used in the New World. The circular motion of the mill is animated through the repetition of its form across the composition—in the swirls of smoke coming from the boiler and from the huge fire in the distant mountains. source

A Dutch painting of a Brazilian sugar-producing farm (engenho) 17th century. source

Jamaica was perhaps the most broadly organized plantation system during this period. By 1700 Jamaica was awash with sugar plantations and Jamaica's population was comprised of 7,000 English to 40,000 slaves. The sugar industry grew quickly in Jamaica -- in 1672 there were 70 plantations producing 772 tonnes of sugar per annum -- growing in the 1770s to over 680 plantations. By 1800, it was 21,000 English to 300,000 slaves, which increased to some 500,000 slaves by the 18th century. In 1820 there were 5,349 properties in Jamaica of which 1,189 contained over 100 slaves. Each estate was its own small world, complete with an entire labour force of field workers and skilled artisans, a hospital, water supply, cattle, mules and horses as well as its own fuel source. Each plantation fueled the wheels of British mercantilism. 

By the early 17th century, the popularity and demand of tobacco had spread throughout Europe, and the European colonialists sought tobacco production in the Americas. The meticulous process of picking the placement of the seedbeds, and the growing of the plants that would eventually grow to be 6 to nine feet tall, was hard graft. Weekly cultivation fo the growing plants, protecting them from weeds and cutworms and other insects that put this precious plant at constant risk of disease, was required to successfully run a tobacco plantation. This was an example of the classic use of heavy slave labor in the fields.  

Slaves working on a tobacco farm in Virginia. source

A 1758 map of the island Hispaniola. The Spaniards colonized this island in the early 16th century. source

This map of Antigua, a British possession from 1632, shows plantations and mills as well as towns, churches and forts. The names of the landowners are indicated and, all over the island, English place names (Falmouth, for example) illustrate how the British attempted to mark their domination on the land. source

A Map of the most Considerable Plantations of the English in America. 1700.

Illustration of a three-roller sugar mill. Two slaves thread the cane through in front and back of the rollers. Working long shifts during harvest, slaves were always at risk for losing fingers or worse in the rollers. The path of the cattle and attendant slaves in their endless journey around the mill forms a circle that orders the rest of the vignettes showing various stages of purification.Two scenes on the right suggest a positive relationship between masters and slaves. In the lower right a slave looks out and smiles at viewers to engage their attention. Behind him a white man looks solicitously at a slave carrying a bundle of cane. source

 

This plate appears in a manual designed for new planters in the French colony of Cayenne. It contains two plans that offer idyllic visions of sugar plantations styled after a French country estate. On the left, the elaborate birds-eye plan includes a chapel and an olive grove, as well as a sugar mill and a cattle pen. The stress is on opulence and order: most of the estate is bounded by fences and organized by trees and paths set in straight lines. Like a French chateau, there is a formal garden, replete with ornamental fountain, next to the planter's house. The second plan (small, but still including a large formal garden) emphasizes surveillance: everything is organized along a narrow axis and the text states that all activities take place under the master's eye. source

Another resource that was utilized by the colonizing European was rice. The colonies of South Carolina depended largely on rice cultivation and prospered high amongst the colonies and native England for it product. The potential of rice production was discovered in the early 1700's, and since the Europeans knew little or nothing about the grain, they desperately sought out West African slaves who had originated from rice-growing regions for any chance of a successful harvest. Plantation owners paid extra for slaves from specific regions of Africs and eventually the organization rice plantations of South Carolina mirrored the traditional systems of the African slaves that worked the fields.

South Carolina's advertisements for desired labor were far more specific than most colonial slave ads. They required trained slaves from certain parts of Africa in order to have any chance of a successful rice harvest; South Carolina's economy depended on it. source