What is "plantation"

Plantation \Plan*ta"tion\, n. [L. plantatio: cf. F. plantation.]

1. The act or practice of planting, or setting in the earth for growth. [R.]

2. The place planted; land brought under cultivation; a piece of ground planted with trees or useful plants; esp., in the United States and West Indies, a large estate appropriated to the production of the more important crops, and cultivated by laborers who live on the estate; as, a cotton plantation; a coffee plantation.

3. An original settlement in a new country; a colony.

   While these plantations were forming in Connecticut.
   --B. Trumbull.

mid-15c., "action of planting," from Middle French plantation, from Latin plantationem (nominative plantatio) "a planting," noun of action from past participle stem of plantare "to plant" (see plant). Historically used for "colony, settlement in a new land" (1610s); meaning "large farm on which tobacco or cotton is grown" is first recorded 1706.

n. Large farm; estate or area of land designated for agricultural growth. Often includes housing for the owner and workers.

1. n. an estate where cash crops are grown on a large scale (especially in tropical areas)

2. a newly established colony (especially in the colonization of North America); "the practice of sending convicted criminals to serve on the Plantations was common in the 17th century"

3. garden consisting of a small cultivated wood without undergrowth [syn: grove, woodlet, orchard]

A plantation is a large piece of land (or water) where one crop is specifically planted for widespread commercial sale and usually tended by resident laborers. The crops grown include fast-growing trees (often conifers), cotton, coffee, tea, cocoa, sugar cane, sisal, oil seeds (e.g. oil palms), rubber trees, and various fruits. Protectionist policies and natural comparative advantage have sometimes contributed to determining where plantations were located.

Among the earliest examples of plantations were the latifundia of the Roman Empire, which produced large quantities of wine and olive oil for export. Plantation agriculture grew rapidly with the increase in international trade and the development of a worldwide economy that followed the expansion of European colonial empires. Like every economic activity, it has changed over time. Earlier forms of plantation agriculture were associated with large disparities of wealth and income, foreign ownership and political influence, and exploitative social systems such as indentured labour and slavery.

Plantation was an early method of colonization where settlers went in order to establish a permanent or semi-permanent colonial base, for example for planting tobacco or cotton. Such plantations were also frequently intended to promote Western culture and Christianity among nearby indigenous peoples, as can be seen in the early East-Coast plantations in America (such as that at Roanoke). Although the term "planter" to refer to a settler first appears as early as the 16th-century, the earliest true colonial plantation is usually agreed to be that of the Plantations of Ireland.

The term "plantation" transferred to the large farms that were the economical basis of many of the 17th-century American colonies. The peak of the plantation economy was in the 18th century, especially the sugar plantations in the Caribbean that depended on slave labor. Most of that time Britain prospered as the top slaving nation in the Atlantic world. Over 2,500,000 slaves were transported to the Caribbean plantations between 1690 and 1807. Because slave life was so harsh on these plantations and slaves died without reproducing themselves, a constant supply of new slaves from Africa was required to maintain the plantation economy against this "natural decrease". In 1789 the French colony of Saint-Domingue, producer of 40 percent of the world's sugar, was the most valuable colony on earth. Slaves outnumbered whites and coloreds by at least eight to one, but provided all of the manual labor. Slave labor created a dramatic change in the eating habits of Britons, one of the greatest in human history. In 1700, Britons used an average of four pounds of sugar a year, but by 1800 they used an average of 16 pounds a year.

In the U.S. state of Maine a plantation is a type of minor civil division falling between township (or unorganized territory) and town. The term, as used in this sense in modern times, appears to be exclusive to Maine. Plantations are typically found in sparsely populated areas.

Author Richard Walden Hale in The Story of Bar Harbor described the formation of a plantation as follows:

First came the survey, without which no settlement was legal. Land so surveyed was divided into 'townships,' which in New England means areas planned for development into full-fledged towns. Then certain proprietors--who might be a religious congregation, a group of speculators, or a group of would-be settlers--bought the 'township,' 'planted it' with settlers, and saw to it that land was reserved for a church and school. When enough settlers had been planted, limited self government was granted, and the township was raised in status to a 'plantation.' When the population of the 'plantation' should have grown large enough, another step forward was taken, the area received full civil rights, the full town organization came into force, and in those days one representative in the legislature or 'General Court' was automatically allotted to the new town.... Such a system still holds good in Maine.... To this day one can go thirty miles northeast of Bar Harbor and find, still unsettled, Township Number Seven, just back of Gouldsboro and Sullivan, and then go twenty miles southeast--in each case as the crow flies--and find Swan's Island Plantation, where to this day there is not enough population for the full complement of town officials.

No other New England state has an entity equivalent to a plantation. Massachusetts used the term "plantation" in colonial times for a community in a pre-town stage of development. Maine probably originally got the term from Massachusetts, as Maine was once part of Massachusetts. The term, however, has been out of wide use in Massachusetts since the 18th century. The term was also used in colonial Rhode Island and a vestige remains in the official State name, Rhode Island and Providence Plantations.

Plantation may refer to:

• Plantation, large farm or estate
  • Plantations in the American South
• Plantation (settlement or colony), early method of colonization
  • Plantations of Ireland

• Plantation Estate, the Winter White House of President Barack Obama, in Hawaii
• Plantation, Florida (disambiguation): a city in SE Florida, an island in SW Florida, and a few smaller communities
• Plantation, Kentucky, city in Jefferson County, Kentucky
• Plantation (Maine), a type of minor civil division

• Plantation, a district of the city of Glasgow, Scotland
• Plantations, a term used by Led Zeppelin fans to describe Robert Plant's spoken passages during concerts
• Plantation Records, a music record label