plantation

Dictionary: plan·ta·tion (plăn-tā'shən) pronunciation

An area under cultivation.
A group of cultivated trees or plants.
A large estate or farm on which crops are raised, often by resident workers.
A newly established settlement; a colony.

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Origin: 1645

It was not new to call a colonial settlement a plantation. That was the term used for the earliest English colonies, both in Virginia and in New England. But as the Planters (1619) prospered, plantation took on a new American meaning, "an individual homestead or farm." This is mentioned in a Connecticut notice of 1645 regulating the purchase of "any plantation or land." For the most part, however, northerners preferred to speak of farms.

Not so in the South, where individually owned plantations of tobacco, sugar cane, rice, and cotton grew grand and opulent through slave labor. Starting in the eighteenth century, plantation came to mean just such a place, the focus of Southern wealth, culture, and mythology until the time of the Civil War, as opposed to the cities of the industrial and mercantile North. Thus, leading Southern political figures like George Washington and Thomas Jefferson had plantations, while northerners Ben Franklin and John Adams did not.

US Military Dictionary: plantation

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n. 1. an estate on which crops such as coffee, sugar, and tobacco are cultivated by resident laborers, which in former times were slaves.

2. a colony.

See the Introduction, Abbreviations and Pronunciation for further details.

Geography Dictionary: plantation

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An agricultural system, generally a monoculture, for the production of tropical and subtropical crops, especially bananas, coffee, cocoa, cotton, palm oil, rubber, sisal, spices, sugar, and tea. The corporately owned holdings are large and employ labour on a large scale. Early stage processing often takes place on site. Old-style plantations, generally in Latin America, were developed to support the lavish lifestyle of their owners, but new-style plantations were often developed by colonial powers, and thus may be seen as a spatial expression of imperialism, and capitalism. With independence, many Third World countries have nationalized their plantations or redistributed the land.

Irish Literature Companion: plantation

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plantation, the seizure of Irish land and the allocation of it to new owners on the condition that they settle it with an English tenantry, or with Irish or Scots sympathetic to English rule. Plantation occured broadly within the period 1550-1700 and was frequently a response to Irish rebellion against the English Crown. Queen Mary (r. 1553-8) gave approval for the plantation of Leix and Offaly. There were plantations in Munster following the rebellion of Gerald Fitzgerald, Earl of Desmond, 1579-80; in Ulster, after the wars between Elizabeth I and Hugh O'Neill, 1594-1603; and in Wexford.

Word Tutor: plantation

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IN BRIEF: A large farm used for growing commercial crops such as cotton or coffee.

The coffee beans are from a plantation in Hawaii.

Wikipedia: Plantation (settlement or colony)

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Jamaica, from the early nineteenth century. Watercolor, ink, and pencil. Created beteween 1808 and 1816.

Plantation was an early method of colonization in which settlers were "planted" abroad in order to establish a permanent or semi-permanent colonial base. Such plantations were also frequently intended to promote Western culture and Christianity among nearby indigenous peoples, as can be seen both in James I's Irish Plantations, and in the early East-Coast plantations in America (such as that at Roanoke). Although the term "planter" to refer to a settler first appears as early as the 16th-century, the earliest true colonial plantation is usually agreed to be that of the Plantations of Ireland.

The term "plantation" transferred to the large farms that were the economical basis of many of the 17th-century American colonies. The peak of the plantation economy was in the 18th century, especially the sugar plantations in the Caribbean that depended on slave labor. Most of that time Britain prospered as the top slaving nation in the Atlantic world.^{[citation needed]} Over 2,500,000 slaves were transported to the Caribbean plantations between 1690 and 1807. Because slave life was so harsh on these plantations and slaves died without reproducing themselves, a constant supply of new slaves from Africa was required to maintain the plantation economy. What has been called a "natural decrease" among the slave population continued for two centuries. In this sense, a plantation represented a killing machine.^[1] In 1789 Saint-Domingue, producer of 40 percent of the world's sugar, was the most valuable colony on earth. Slaves outnumbered whites and coloreds by at least eight to one but provided all of the manual labor. Slave labor created a dramatic change in the eating habits in Britons, one of the greatest in human history. In 1700, Britons used an average of four pounds of sugar a year, but by 1800 they used an average of 16 pounds a year.^[1]

1 Ireland
2 Scottish Highlands
3 North America
4 References
5 See also

Ireland

The Plantations of Ireland were an instrument of retribution and colonization after several Irish rebellions against English rule throughout the 16th and 17th centuries. The largest settlement, the Plantation of Ulster, was established following the rebellion of Hugh Roe O'Donnell and Hugh O'Neill in the Nine Years' War (1594-1603). The plantations were seen as part of process that would Anglicise Ireland, as well as a means of maintaining English political control in Ireland. Lands were seized from the native landowners both as punishment for rebellion and as punishment for remaining Catholic rather than conforming to the (Protestant) established church. These lands were given to English (and later, Scottish) Protestant settlers who would be loyal to the Crown and keep the native Irish under control.

Scottish Highlands

During the Middle Ages the Scottish government planted Scots-speaking lowland merchant colonies in the Gaidhealtachd (the Gaelic-speaking part of Scotland), for example at Campbeltown and Cromarty.

North America

During the 17th century, the Chesapeake bay area was immensely hospitable to tobacco cultivation. Ships annually hauled 1.5 million pounds (680,000 kilograms) of tobacco out to the Bay by the 1630s, an about 40 million pounds (18 million kilograms) by the end of the century. Farmers responded to the falling prices by growing even more tobacco. The labor supply from Africa (slaves) was expensive, and therefore they had to rely on much cheaper indentured servants.

European colonists didn't regard the land as belonging to the Native Americans, so the Plantations of New England were seen as occupying virgin land. The first English settlement, the Plymouth Plantation, was to create a new beginning for English dissenters and so essentially utopian. Later plantations were more overtly entrepreneurial: European investors funded colonists in the expectation of good returns. Example include the Massachusetts Bay Colony, the New Haven Colony, the Dutch settlement of New Amsterdam (now New York) and the French Nouvelle Colonie in Canada.

In the state of Maine, the old meaning has been preserved in the name of local government jurisdictions. It is also preserved in the full name of Rhode Island, Rhode Island and Providence Plantations.

References

^ ^a ^b Rogozinski, Jan (1999). A Brief History of the Caribbean (Revised ed.). New York: Facts on File, Inc.. pp. 110, 126, 141–142. ISBN 0-8160-3811-2.

Albert Galloway Keller, 1908, Colonization: A Study of the Founding of New Societies, Boston: Ginn & Company

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plantation

Contents

Ireland

Scottish Highlands

North America

References

See also