What type of study is this?

This is a Literature Review study.

August 19, 2025

The slave plantation: Environment, history, and cycles of capital accumulation

Key Points

This critique reveals that the concepts of anthropocene and capitalocene may not adequately explain historical relationships.
It emphasizes the importance of examining plantations as unique systems that combine land, slave labor, and technology in commodity production.
Analysis focuses on the sugar plantation's evolution through various commodity frontiers in Brazil, the Caribbean, and Cuba during specific centuries.
This perspective highlights the integral role of plantations in the historical expansion of capitalism, providing new insights into economic history.

Abstract

This article critiques the conceptual adequacy of the concepts anthroprocene, capitalocene, and plantationocene. In their place, it proposes an historical approach to the interrelated histories of capitalism, the plantation, slavery, and nature in the Americas from the perspective of commodity production. It treats plantations as historically specific combinations of land, slave labor, and productive technology. Plantations are formed and reformed through the successive creation of new commodity frontiers, which are themselves integral to the historical expansion of capitalism. Focusing on the productive structure of the sugar plantation, this article traces its transformations through the successive construction of commodity frontiers in 16th century Brazil, 17th British and French Caribbean, and 19th century Cuba.

اسأل الذكاء الاصطناعي

Bookmark