Why did plantations develop in the Southern Colonies?

Answer 1

Plantations developed in the Southern colonies of the US because of cheap labor. Following the invention of the cotton gin in 1793, millions of acres had been turned to cotton production. Cotton was the chief money making product and using slavery, cotton could be produced for nearly no labor costs, ensuring massive economic gains for plantation owners.

Answer 2

Plantations dominated the south from the mid eighteenth century to the civil war. These large farms employed 20 or more slaves produced staple crops ( cotton, rice, tobacco) for markets. Planters owned both the means of production, the land, tools, and the labor force. Such a system was not inevitable and begun in the late 17th century, but with the end of slavery the system collapsed because former slaves refused to work in gangs or to accept labor discipline; planters divided their land into small sharecropped farms. Before 1865 staple production, slavery, and the plantation system was one. Using land as collateral planters bought slaves to increase production. The more slaves the larger the output and the greater the profits.

The system began in the tobacco economy of the 17th century in the Chesapeake colonies. To meet exploding European demand for tobacco planters required more labor than their families could provide. They employed indentured servants who came to America with their passage paid by the planter. In doing so they agreed to work for 7 years for the planter. At first servants were inexpensive and a number of planters could afford them, but labor conditions were so oppressive that the flow of servants began to decline. Thus, they began to try slave labor to meet their needs. Although only about a tenth of Chesapeake tobacco cultivators were large planters by the late 18th century close to half of the slaves in the area were working on tobacco plantations.

The plantation system spread though out the south during the 18th and early 19th centuries and by 1720 it had appeared in the rice country of Carolina and Georgia coasts where great planters owned most of the slaves. The greatest growth of the plantation system occurred between 1790 and 1860 when the demand for cotton grew in England. Now, the system was entrenched in the south and white farmers who only used family members were marginalized and forced from the best land. It was now complete.