The End of Planter Dominance
Questions
To what extent was the decline of the plantation economy in post-emancipation Jamaica a consequence of the abolition of slavery?
To what extent did the end of slavery in Jamaica mean new labour practices on the plantation?
How did whites in the post-bellum American South create and enforce new boundaries of race?
To what extent did planters continue to monopolise social, economic and political power in the post-bellum American South in the generation following the American Civil War?
Readings:
Thomas C. Holt, The Problem of Freedom: Race, Labor, and Politics in Jamaica and Britain, 1832-1938 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University, 1992), 115-40
James L. Roark, Masters without Slaves: Southern Planters in the Civil War and Reconstruction (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1977), 156-210
J. William Harris, Deep Souths: Delta, Piedmont, and Sea Island Society (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001), 55-82