what percentage of the white southern population belonged to the plantation-owning class

Racial and socio-economic caste of Pan-American society

Sarah Reeve Ladson, daughter of American revolutionary, politician and planter James Ladson; she "visually made reference to the gustatory modality of the slave women around whom she had been raised."^[1]

The planter form, known alternatively in the The states as the Southern aristocracy, was a racial and socio-economic caste of Pan-American society that dominated 17th and 18th century agricultural markets. The Atlantic slave trade permitted planters access to cheap African slave labor for the planting and harvesting of crops such as tobacco, cotton, indigo, java, tea, cocoa, sugar pikestaff, sisal, oil seeds, oil palms, hemp, rubber copse, and fruits. Planters were considered role of the American gentry.

In the Southern United States, planters maintained a singled-out civilization, which was characterized by its similarity to the manners and community of the British dignity and gentry. The civilisation had an emphasis on chivalry, gentility, and hospitality. The civilization of the Southern Us, with its landed plantocracy, was distinctly unlike from areas north of the Stonemason–Dixon line and west of the Appalachians. The northern and western areas were characterized past small landed belongings, worked past yeoman farmers without the use of slave labor.

Later on the American Civil War (1861–1865), many in the social grade saw their wealth greatly reduced, equally slavery was abolished in the Usa. After emancipation, many plantations were converted to a sharecropping model with African-American freedmen working as sharecroppers on the same land which they had worked every bit slaves before the war. During the Gilded Age, many plantations, no longer viable equally agronomical operations, were purchased by wealthy northern industrialists as hunting retreats. After some plantations became museums, ofttimes on the National Register of Celebrated Places.

Planters were prolific throughout European colonies in North and South America and the West Indies. Members of the class include colonists Robert "King" Carter, William Byrd of Westover, many signers of the Proclamation of Independence including Benjamin Harrison Five, Thomas Nelson, Jr., George Wythe, Carter Braxton and Richard Henry Lee, Founding Fathers, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and James Monroe, Confederate President Jefferson Davis, Confederate Full general Robert East. Lee, Mary Chesnut, Valcour Aime, Sallie Ward, and the fictional Scarlett O'Hara from the film Gone with the Wind (1939).

History [edit]

Groundwork [edit]

The search for gold and silver was a constant theme in overseas expansion, but there were other European demands that the New World could likewise satisfy, which contributed to its growing involvement in the Western-dominated world economy. While Spanish America seemed to fulfill dreams of mineral wealth, Brazil became the first major plantation colony in 1532, organized to produce a tropical crop, carbohydrate, in keen demand and curt supply in Europe.^[2] The other major powers of Western Europe soon hoped to found assisting colonies of their ain. Presented with new opportunities, Europeans who were disenchanted by the rigid social structures of feudalism emigrated to the abundant virginal lands of the colonial borderland.

Arriving in the tardily 16th and the early 17th centuries, settlers landed on the shores of an unspoiled and hostile countryside. Early on planters first began as colony farmers providing for the needs of settlements besieged by dearth, disease, and tribal raids. Native Americans friendly to the colonists taught them to cultivate native plant species, including tobacco, carbohydrate and fruits, which, within a century, would become a global manufacture itself that funded a multinational slave trade. Colonial politics would come to exist dominated by wealthy noble landowners interested in commercial evolution.^[2]

In an effort to reduce the financial burden of continental wars, European governments began instituting land pension systems by which a soldier, typically an officeholder, would be granted land in the colonies for services rendered. That incentivized military professionals to settle in the Americas and thus contribute to colonial defense against foreign colonists and hostile Natives.

Rise of plantation economy [edit]

John Rolfe, a settler from Jamestown, was the first colonist to abound tobacco in Northward America. He arrived in Virginia with tobacco seeds procured from an earlier voyage to Trinidad, and in 1612, he harvested his inaugural crop for sale on the European marketplace.^[3] In the 17th century, the Chesapeake Bay area was immensely hospitable to tobacco cultivation. Ships annually hauled ane.v million lb (680,000 kg) of tobacco out to the Bay by the 1630s and about 40 million lb (xviii million kg) past the end of the century. Tobacco planters financed their operations with loans from London. When tobacco prices dropped precipitously in the 1750s, many plantations struggled to remain financially solvent. In an effort to gainsay fiscal ruin, planters pushed to increase crop yield or, with the depletion of soil nutrients, converted to growing other crops such equally cotton fiber or wheat.

In 1720, coffee was first introduced to the West Indies past French naval officeholder Gabriel de Clieu, who procured a coffee plant seedling from the Majestic Botanical Gardens in Paris and transported it to Martinique. He transplanted it on the slopes of Mount Pelée and was able to harvest his first crop in 1726, or shortly thereafter. Within 50 years, there were xviii,000 coffee trees in Martinique, enabling the spread of java cultivation to Saint-Domingue, New Kingdom of spain, and other islands of the Caribbean. The French territory of Saint-Domingue began cultivating coffee in 1734, and by 1788, it supplied half the global market place. The French colonial plantations relied heavily on African slave laborers. Withal, the harsh conditions that slaves endured on coffee plantations precipitated the Haitian Revolution. Coffee had a major influence on the geography of Latin America.^[4]

Revolution and abolitionism [edit]

An historic period of enlightenment dominated the world of ideas in Europe during the 18th century. Philosophers began writing pamphlets confronting slavery and its moral and economic justifications, including Montesquieu in The Spirit of the Laws (1748) and Denis Diderot in the Encyclopédie.^[five] The laws governing slavery in the French West Indies, the Lawmaking Noir of Louis XIV, granted unparalleled rights for slaves to ally, gather publicly, and abjure from work on Sundays. It forbade slave owners to torture or to split up families; though corporal punishment was sanctioned, masters who killed their slaves or falsely defendant a slave of a crime and had the slave put to death would be fined. Masters openly and consistently bankrupt the Code and passed local legislation that reversed its less desirable articles.

White overseer or master whipping a spring slave in Brazil

The Enlightenment writer Guillaume Raynal attacked slavery in the 1780 edition of his history of European colonization. He likewise predicted a general slave revolt in the colonies by saying that in that location were signs of "the impending storm."^[six] Sugar production in Saint-Domingue was sustained nether especially harsh conditions, including the boiling climate of the Caribbean area, where diseases such as malaria and yellowish fever acquired loftier bloodshed. White planters and their families, together with the merchants and shopkeepers, lived in fear of slave rebellion. Thus, in the functions of society and efforts to combat dissent, cruelty was noted in the form of overwork, inadequate food and shelter, bereft clothing and medical intendance, rape, lashings, castration and burnings. Runaway slaves, chosen Maroons, hid in the jungles abroad from civilization and lived off the state and what could be stolen in fierce raids on the island's sugar and java plantations. Although the numbers in the bands grew large (sometimes into the thousands), they generally lacked the leadership and strategy to achieve large-scale objectives. In April 1791, a massive slave insurgency rose violently against the plantation organisation, setting a precedent of resistance to slavery.

On 4 Feb 1794, during the French Revolution, the National Associates of the Commencement Commonwealth abolished slavery in France and its colonies. The military successes of the French Democracy and of Napoleon Bonaparte carried across Europe the ethics of egalitarianism and brought into question the do of slavery in the colonies of other European powers.

The legality of slave ownership under English mutual law was abolished in 1772 as a result of Somersett's Case. In 1783, an abolitionist move began amidst the British population, and that aforementioned year a grouping of Quakers founded the get-go British abolitionist organisation.^[vii] William Wilberforce led the cause of abolition through his campaign in Parliament. His efforts finally abolished the slave merchandise in the British Empire with the 1807 Slave Merchandise Act. He connected to campaign for the abolitionism of slavery in the British Empire, which he did to see in the 1833 Slavery Abolition Human action.^{[ citation needed ]}

Compages [edit]

A plantation house served to group the owner's family unit, guests, and house slaves within one large structure in a central location on the manor. Often starting equally a modest abode, the house was enlarged or replaced with a newer, more impressive home as the planter'south wealth grew. Normally seen is the addition of massive Greek Revival columns, curved stairs, semi-detached wings, and other architectural elements popular at the time.

French Colonial [edit]

Houmas House, named for the Native peoples indigenous to the region.

The French origins of planters in Canada, Louisiana and Saint-Domingue heavily influenced the development of French Colonial compages, characterized by its wide hipped roofs extending over wraparound porches, thin wooden columns, and living quarters raised above basis level. Learning building practices from the West Indies, colonists designed applied dwellings for a territory prone to flooding.

A notable loss of plantation homes in Louisiana is attributed to an economic shift from agriculture to industry during the Reconstruction era.

Georgian [edit]

Georgian compages was widely disseminated in the Thirteen Colonies during the Georgian era. American buildings of the Georgian period were very ofttimes constructed of wood with clapboards; even columns were made of timber, framed up, and turned on an oversized lathe. At the start of the period, the difficulties of obtaining and transporting brick or stone made them a common alternative only in the larger cities or where they were obtainable locally.

Westover Plantation under Union occupation in 1865.

A premier instance of Georgian planter architecture is Westover Plantation, built in the mid-18th century every bit the residence of William Byrd 3, the son of the founder of the Richmond, Virginia. An elaborate doorway, which is recognized as "the Westover doorway," adorns the main entrance and contrasts an otherwise unproblematic structure.^{[8] [9]} During the American Civil War, the house served every bit the headquarters of Marriage General Fitz John Porter, the protégé of George McClellan, who was stationed at nearby Berkeley Plantation, and purportedly had its due east fly struck by a Confederate cannonball fired from the south side of the James River. The fly defenseless fire and lay in ruin until Mrs. Clarise Sears Ramsey, a Byrd descendant, purchased the property in 1899. She was instrumental in modernizing the house, rebuilding the due east wing, and calculation hyphens to connect the main firm to the previously split dependencies, thereby creating one long building.^[8]

Palladian [edit]

Boone Hall Plantation in Charleston, South Carolina.

Introduced to the continent by George Berkeley in the 1720s, Palladian compages became pop with American order in the construction of colleges and public buildings, while many houses besides were built in the Jefferson Paladian style of Monticello. Andrea Palladio developed Palladianism in the 16th century, publishing in 1570 Quattro Libri, a treatise on compages in iv volumes and illustrated with woodcuts after Palladio's own drawings.^[10]

Covered and columned porches feature prominently in Palladian architecture, in many cases dominating the main facade. Red brick exteriors and either slanted or domed roofs are commonplace among residential buildings.

Monticello, residence of US President Thomas Jefferson, was built in a mode unique to him that has been emulated in the structure of many colleges, such as The Rotunda of the University of Virginia, as well as churches, courthouses, concert halls, and military schools.

Bibliography [edit]

• Arthur, Stanley Clisby (1931). Old Families of Louisiana. New Orleans: Harmanson. ISBN9781455609864.
• Brandt, Allan (2007). The Cigarette Century: The Rise, Fall, and Deadly Persistence of the Product That Defined America. New York: Basic Books. ISBN9780465070473.
• Dunn, Richard S. (1972). Saccharide and Slaves: The Rising of the Planter Form in the English West Indies, 1624–1713. Chapel Loma: University of N Carolina Press. ISBN9781469600420.
• Laborie, P. J. (1798). The Java Planter of Saint Domingo. London: Printed for T. Cadell & W. Davies.

See as well [edit]

• Colonial families of Maryland
• First Families of Virginia
• Plantation complexes in the Southern United States

References [edit]

1. ^ Maurie D. McInnis, The Politics of Taste in Antebellum Charleston, p. 14, UNC Press Books, 2015, ISBN 9781469625997
2. ^ ^{a b} Stearns, Peter (1999). "The First Plantation Colony". International World History Projection. Archived from the original on July 1, 2018. Retrieved July 2, 2018.
3. ^ Brandt 2007, p. twenty.
4. ^ Rice, Robert A. (1999). "A Place Unbecoming: The Coffee Farm of Northern Latin America". Geographical Review. 89 (4): 554–579. doi:10.2307/216102. JSTOR 216102. PMID 20662186.
5. ^ Di Lorenzo, A; Donoghue, J; et al. (2016). "Abolition and Republicanism over the Transatlantic Long Term, 1640–1800". La Révolution française (11). doi:x.4000/lrf.1690.
6. ^ Censer, Jack Richard; Chase, Lynn (2001). Liberty, Equality, Fraternity: Exploring the French Revolution. Pennsylvania Land University Press. p. 119. ISBN9780271020884.
7. ^ "Society of Friends | religion". Encyclopædia Britannica . Retrieved 13 June 2017.
8. ^ ^{a b} "Westover Plantation: Official website". Westover Plantation. Retrieved June 24, 2018.
9. ^ "Westover". U.S. National Register of Historic Places. U.S. National Park Service. 1966. Retrieved June 24, 2018.
10. ^ "Palladio and his Books". Center for Palladian Studies in America. palladiancenter.org. Archived from the original on July 5, 2018. Retrieved June 23, 2018.

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Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planter_class

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