Planters, Merchants, and Slaves : Plantation Societies in British America, 1650-1820 / Trevor Burnard.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Burnard, Trevor, 1960- Author.

Series:

American beginnings, 1500-1900.

American Beginnings, 1500-1900

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Plantations--North America--History.

Plantations.

Plantations--Jamaica--History.

Slavery--North America--History.

Slavery.

North America--History--Colonial period, ca. 1600-1775.

North America.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (368 p.)

Place of Publication:

Chicago : University of Chicago Press, [2015]

Language Note:

English

Summary:

As with any enterprise involving violence and lots of money, running a plantation in early British America was a serious and brutal enterprise. In the contentious Planters, Merchants, and Slaves, Burnard argues that white men did not choose to develop and maintain the plantation system out of virulent racism or sadism, but rather out of economic logic because-to speak bluntly-it worked. These economically successful and ethically monstrous plantations required racial divisions to exist, but their successes were measured in gold, rather than skin or blood. Sure to be controversial, this book is a major intervention in the scholarship on slavery, economic development, and political power in early British America, mounting a powerful and original argument that boldly challenges historical orthodoxy.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Illustrations

Abbreviations

Introduction: Plantation Worlds

1. The Rise of the Large Integrated Plantation

2. Violence, White Solidarity, and the Rise of Planter Elites

3. The Wealth of the Plantations

4. "A Prodigious Mine": Jamaica

5. The American Revolution and Plantation America

Epilogue: Slaves and Planters

Appendix: An Essay on Sources

Acknowledgments

Notes

Index

Notes:

Includes index.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 24. Apr 2020)

ISBN:

9780226286242

022628624X

OCLC:

923011131