Plantation

:This article is about crop plantations. For plantations of people, see article Plantation (settlement or colony) for that 17th Century meaning.

Slavery, para-slavery and plantations

:{{main|Plantation economy}} {{main|Slavery}}

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Slave labour was used extensively to work on early plantations (such as cotton plantations) in the southern states of the USA, and in modern times low wages paid to plantation workers are still a part of plantation profitability in some areas with minimal employee-protection legislation. Sugar plantations in the Caribbean and Brazil worked by slave labor are perhaps the best example of the plantation system at its height.

Related Topics:
Slave labour - Southern states - USA - Sugar - Caribbean - Brazil

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In more recent times, overt slavery has been replaced by para-slavery or slavery-in-kind. At its most extreme, workers are in debt bondage: they must work to pay a debt at such punitive interest rates that it may never be paid off. Others work unreasonably long hours and are paid subsistence wages that (in practice) may only be spent in the company shop.

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Related matters

In the American South, plantations were centered on a plantation house, the residence of the owner, where important business was conducted. The plantations engendered their own characteristic architecture; see e.g. Berkeley Plantation.

Related Topics:
American South - Berkeley Plantation

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In Brazil, a sugarcane plantation was termed an engenho ("engine") and a 17th-century English usage for organized colonial production was "factory". Such colonial social and economic structures are discussed at Plantation economy.

Related Topics:
Brazil - Plantation economy

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