Planter class

The planter class was a racial and socioeconomic class which emerged in the Americas during European colonization in the early modern period. Members of the class, most of whom were settlers of European descent, consisted of individuals who owned or were financially connected to plantations, large-scale farms devoted to the production of cash crops in high demand across markets in Europe and America. These plantations were operated by the forced labor of enslaved people and indentured servants and typically existed in subtropical, tropical, and somewhat more temperate climates, where the soil was fertile enough to handle the intensity of plantation agriculture. Cash crops produced on plantations owned by the planter class included tobacco, sugarcane, cotton, indigo, coffee, tea, cocoa, sisal, oil seeds, oil palms, hemp, rubber trees, and fruits. In North America, the planter class formed part of the American gentry.

As European settlers began to colonize the Americas in the 16th and 17th centuries, they quickly realized the economic potential of growing cash crops which were in high demand in Europe. Settlers began to establish plantations, the majority of which were located in the West Indies. Initially, these plantations were operated with the labor of indentured servants from Europe, but they were eventually supplanted by enslaved Africans brought to the Americas via the Atlantic slave trade. Colonial plantations eventually formed a key component of the triangular trade, whereby European goods were brought to Africa and exchanged for slaves, which were brought to the Americas to be sold to colonists, who used them to produce cash crops which were shipped back to Europe; most African slaves brought to the Americas were sold to the planter class, who frequently subjected them to brutal mistreatment.

Beginning in the mid-18th century, the rise of abolitionism in Europe and the Americas led to a popular movement to abolish slavery in European colonies, which met with strong resistance from the planter class. Despite this, European nations gradually began to abolish their involvement in the slave trade and the institution of slavery itself during the late-18th and early 19th centuries. Nations in the Americas followed suit, with Brazil being the last nation to abolish slavery, in 1888. The abolition of slavery led to a rapid decline in the fortunes of the planter class, which responded by importing indentured servants from Asia. By the 20th century, the planter class ceased to be politically and socially influential in either the Americas or Europe. The exact reasons for the decline of the planter class and their role in the development of racial capitalism remain a strong point of contention among historians.

The search for gold and silver was a constant theme in overseas expansion, but there were other European demands that the New World could also 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, sugar, in great demand and short supply in Europe. The other major powers of Western Europe soon hoped to establish profitable colonies of their own. Presented with new opportunities, Europeans who were disenchanted by the rigid social structures of feudalism emigrated to the abundant virginal lands of the colonial frontier.

Arriving in the late 16th and the early 17th centuries, settlers landed on the shores of an unspoiled and hostile countryside. Early planters first began as colony farmers providing for the needs of settlements besieged by famine, disease, and tribal raids. Native Americans friendly to the colonists taught them to cultivate native plant species, including tobacco and fruits, which, within a century, would become a global industry itself that funded a multinational slave trade. Colonial politics would come to be dominated by wealthy noble landowners interested in commercial development. In an effort to reduce the financial burden of continental wars, European governments began instituting land pension systems by which a soldier, typically an officer, 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.

John Rolfe, a settler from Jamestown, was the first colonist to grow tobacco in North 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 market. In the 17th century, the Chesapeake Bay area was immensely hospitable to tobacco cultivation. Ships annually hauled 1.5 million lb (680,000 kg) of tobacco out to the Bay by the 1630s and about 40 million lb (18 million kg) by 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 combat financial ruin, planters pushed to increase crop yield or, with the depletion of soil nutrients, converted to growing other crops such as cotton or wheat.

In 1720, coffee was first introduced to the West Indies by French naval officer Gabriel de Clieu, who procured a coffee plant seedling from the Royal 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 18,000 coffee trees in Martinique, enabling the spread of coffee cultivation to Saint-Domingue, New 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. The French colonial plantations relied heavily on African slave laborers. However, the harsh conditions that slaves endured on coffee plantations precipitated the Haitian Revolution. Coffee had a major influence on the geography of Latin America.

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