When did the plantation system end?

Only after the successive shocks of the persistent drought and severe economic depression did a weakened plantation system finally succumb to the modernizing incentives created by the New Deal in the 1930s. Only then, after hundreds of years of vigorous life, did the southern plantation die its final death.

What did the plantation system produce?

Plantations were large farms that typically produced one staple crop. These crops could be rice, tobacco, cotton, sugar, or some other crop that was valuable to foreign buyers, as the South had an international economy. These large amounts of crops required a huge amount of labor to cultivate.

What invention changed the plantation system?

In 1794, U.S.-born inventor Eli Whitney (1765-1825) patented the cotton gin, a machine that revolutionized the production of cotton by greatly speeding up the process of removing seeds from cotton fiber.

What happened to plantations after the Civil War?

The Civil War had harsh economic ramifications on Southern farms and plantations. The small percentage of those who were plantation owners found themselves without a source of labor, and many plantations had to be auctioned off (often at greatly reduced value) to settle debts and support the family.

What was life like on the plantations?

On the plantations, enslaved people lived in small cottages with thatched roofs. The cottages often had earthen floors and were furnished with only a bed, table and bench.

How did the plantation system change after the Civil War?

After the Civil War, sharecropping and tenant farming took the place of slavery and the plantation system in the South. Sharecropping and tenant farming were systems in which white landlords (often former plantation slaveowners) entered into contracts with impoverished farm laborers to work their lands.

How were plantations affected by the Civil War?

How did life change after the Civil War?

The first three of these postwar amendments accomplished the most radical and rapid social and political change in American history: the abolition of slavery (13th) and the granting of equal citizenship (14th) and voting rights (15th) to former slaves, all within a period of five years.

How did the plantation system develop in the south?

The plantation system developed in the American South as the British colonists arrived in Virginia and divided the land into large areas suitable for farming. Because the economy of the South depended on the cultivation of crops, the need for agricultural labor led to the establishment of slavery.

How did plantation agriculture affect the tropical rainforest?

As such, plantation agriculture profoundly reshaped the demography, ecology, and economy of large areas in the tropics. Large areas of arable lands throughout the tropical and subtropical ecosystems are still allocated to plantation crops (Table 1 ).

Why were plantations important to the development of Virginia?

The settlements required a large number of laborers to sustain them, and thus laborers were imported from Africa. African slaves began arriving in Virginia in 1619. The term “plantation” arose as the southern settlements, originally linked with colonial expansion, came to revolve around the production of agriculture.

How did plantation slavery change the culture of the Caribbean?

Douglas V. Armstrong is an anthropologist from New York whose studies on plantation slavery have been focused on the Caribbean. In the Caribbean, as well as in the slave states, the shift from small-scale farming to industrial agriculture transformed the culture of these societies, as their economic prosperity depended on the plantation.