Taking a multidisciplinary and global approach, this edited book examines the dynamic role of plantations as productive, socio-political and ecological forms throughout imperial and post-colonial worlds spanning multiple and broad temporalities. Showcasing an expansive range of case studies across different geographies, the collection sheds light on the heterogeneity of plantations and offers insights into the afterlives, spectres and remnants of systems that have been analysed as schemes of production, extraction and authority. Focusing on the expansion of plantation systems throughout various political-economic and ecological projects, and across the modern (and post-modern) period, allows the authors to move beyond analyses that often deal with individual empires through human-centered lenses. The contributors explore resistance to the mechanisms of extraction and control that plantations and their afterlives demanded, shedding light on their excesses, contradictions, failures and deviations. Offering a comprehensive treatment of global plantations, this book provides valuable reading for researchers with an interest in the socio-political and environmental effects of colonialism and imperialism in their various guises.Chapters 1, 8 and 11 are available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.
Author(s): Colette Le Petitcorps, Marta Macedo, Irene Peano
Series: Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Year: 2023
Language: English
Pages: 380
City: Cham
Foreword
Acknowledgments
Praise for Global Plantations in the Modern World
Contents
Notes on Contributors
List of Figures
List of Tables
1 Introduction: Viewing Plantations at the Intersection of Political Ecologies and Multiple Space-Times
Plantation Ecologies: Environmental Degradation, Segregated Human Relations and Racial Injustice
The Afterlives of the Plantation: Old and New Insights
Plantations as Sovereign Machines: Subject Formation, Relations of Patronage and the Intimacies of Power
References
Part I Revisiting the Caribbean: Genealogies for the Plantationocene
2 From Marrons to Kreyòl: Human-Animal Relations in Early Caribbean
Introduction
Inaugural Multispecies Encounters
Provision Grounds and the Ambiguous Materiality of Freedom
Counter-Plantation and Its Afterlives
References
3 The Rise and Fall of Caporalisme Agraire in Haiti (1789–1806): Labor Perspectives Through the Plantation Complex
Introduction
Policing Emancipation, Preserving Plantation
Revolutionary Citizenship Through Militarized Agriculture
Land Concentration
Limitations to Mobility
Discipline and Labor Exploitation
The Fall of Caporalisme Agraire and the Plantation Afterlives
References
4 Cacos and Cotton: Unmaking Imperial Geographies on Haiti’s Central Plateau
Introduction
Andeyò
Occupation Infrastructure
Tropic of Cotton
Transformations: The Land of Milk and Honey
Conclusion
References
5 Nostalgia for Oranges: Plantations as a Development Promise in Socialist Cuba
The Socialist Plantation, a Matrix for a New Society
The Scope of the Plantation: State Property as Revolutionary Sovereignty
Tasting “Development” in Citrus Plantations
Longing for Plantations, Desiring Normality
Conclusion
References
Part II Continental and Pacific Americas: Multiple Subjectivities Between Control and Resistance
6 ‘[A] Continual Exercise of…Patience and Economy’: Plantation Overseers, Agricultural Innovation, and State Formation in Eighteenth-Century North America
Introduction
The Development of a Stereotype
A Changing Agricultural Context
Criticisms of Overseers and Overseer Responses
Overseer Violence and State Formation
Conclusion
References
7 Inside the Big House: Slavery, Rationalization of Domestic Labor and the Construction of a New Habitus on Brazilian Coffee Plantations During the Second Slavery
The Rationalization of Work, Spatial Division, and Occupations of Enslaved People on Coffee Plantations
Domestic Slavery, Labor Specialization, and Slavocratic Habitus
References
8 Plantation Colonialism in Late Nineteenth-Century Hawai‘i: The Case of Chinese Sugar Planters
Introduction
State Formation Processes and Chinese Migration Before 1874
Non-Western Planters and the Sugar Boom After 1874
Co-operative Production and the Case of Kohala, Island of Hawai‘i
The Kohala Rebellion of 1891
Conclusion
References
Part III West Africa and Its Diasporas: Excavating Forgotten Pasts and Haunted Presents
9 The Materialities of Danish Plantation Agriculture at Dodowa, Ghana: An Archaeological Perspective
Introduction
Danish Plantation System in Ghana
The Study Area
Frederikssted Plantation
Material Artefacts
Drinking and Eating at the Plantation
Barrel Hoops
Royal Copenhagen Porcelain
Stoneware
Windmill Decorations
Willow Pattern
Semi-Porcelain
Corned Beef and Sardine Keys
Mineral Water Bottles and Tumbler
Food-Related Bottles (Sauce and Pickle Bottles)
Square Bottles (Gin/Schnapps Bottles)
Cylindrical Bottles (Wine/champagne)
Building Implements
Screws with Washers
Strap Hinges
The Brick Hammer
Axe (Splitting Maul)
Padlock and Keys
Farming Tools
Machete Blade
Ornamentation
Whieldonware
Pierced-Edge Porcelain
Perfume Bottles
Bedknobs
Entertainment
Ceramic Dolls
Harmonica
Rural Telephony
Telegraph Wire Insulators
Domestic/Industrial Chemicals (Poison Bottles)
Cottage Industry (Beads and Sewing)
Local Beads
European/Imported Beads
Sewing Machine Part
Smoking at the Plantation Site
European/Imported Smoking Pipes
Local Smoking Pipes
Household Tools/Items
Cutlery
Local Pottery Materials
Faunal Remains
Currency (Cowrie Shells)
Accounting/Bookkeeping/Writing
Conclusion
References
10 “Sweet Mother”: The Neoliberal Plantation in Sierra Leone
Introduction
“Bold Experiments”
Sweet Times at Magbass
The Promise of Productive Life
Conclusion
References
11 “New Slavery”, Modern Marronage and the Multiple Afterlives of Plantations in Contemporary Italy
Speaking of Slavery Today
Before, Against and Beyond Echoes of the Middle Passage
Coda: The Black Mediterranean, Modern Marronage and Their Shadows
References
Part IV South and South-East Asia: Indigenous Labor, More-Than-Human Entanglements and the Afterlives of Multiple Crises
12 The Multispecies World of Oil Palm: Indigenous Marind Perspectives on Plantation Ecologies in West Papua
Destruction
Parasitism
Mutualism
Conclusions
Coda
References
13 Colonial Plantations and Their Afterlives: Legal Disciplines, Indian Historiographies and Their Lessons. An Interview with Rana Behal
Part V Afterword
14 Afterlives: The Recursive Plantation
Modernities
Mobilities
Mutualities
Waves
References
Index
