dec 1, 1497 - Plantations

Description:

New form of economic unit emerging alongside the burgeoning Atlantic trade. Designed around production of cash crops such as sugar, tobacco, and, later, cotton, plantations were owned by a single person or family and worked by a large population of usually coerced laborers. In the Caribbean and Atlantic Colonies, these laborers were often imported African slaves, whereas in the Virginia and the Middle Colonies there was significant experimentation with indentured servitude (thru the Headright System) and indigenous slavery before African slavery was settled upon as the primary means of tobacco farming. This development occurred due to rising social tensions between wealthy planters and commoners militarized by the frontier, averse to collaboration with indigenous people in any capacity and, of course, to their own subjugation. Things came to a head during Bacon's Rebellion. Plantations in the Caribbean were particularly deadly, with greater mortality than natural replacement rates, while enslaved populations in North America could maintain stable population growth.

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