Part II Introduction

The slave plantation integrated the new commodity frontiers of the lower Mississippi valley, Cuba, and Brazil into the world-economic division of labor. In each of these zones, more and larger plantations than had existed previously in any region of the Atlantic economy produced ever greater quantities of cotton, sugar, and coffee to satisfy growing world demand. While the plantations of these new productive zones shared general traits with the plantation regimes that preceded them, the plantation as a form of socioeconomic organization was far from being fixed, static, or rigid. The form of plantation organization was dramatically reconstituted in the