Product Description

Over a period of several centuries, Europeans developed an intricate system of plantation agriculture overseas that was quite different from the agricultural system used at home. Though the plantation complex centered on the American tropics, its influence was much wider. Much more than an economic order for the Americas, the plantation complex had an important place in world history. These essays concentrate on the intercontinental impact.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #96528 in Books
• Published on: 1998-02-13
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 236 pages

Review
"Anyone interested in New World foundations should begin with this collection; even experts will find thought-provoking moments here." R.T. Brown, Choice

"...the breadth of Curtin's coverage and the immense learning and influence that he brings to this difficult task of synthesis doubtless puts The Rise and Fall on the short list of essential readings for anyone interested in Atlantic history." Francisco A. Scarano, International Journal of African History Studies

Customer Reviews

History on a huge scale
In a way I shudder at the idea of reviewing a book like Philip D. Curtin's "The Rise and Fall of the Plantation Complex: Essays in Atlantic History" for the simple fact that a book containing fourteen detailed essays is daunting to summarize. Which essay should receive the most attention? The reviewer of Curtin's book soon realizes that such a question does not have an easy answer. Nearly all of the articles contained in this slim volume warrant far more attention than I can give them in a 1000 word review. I'll have to resort to sweeping generalization in the main, most likely, but that's acceptable considering the focus of these writings deals with a sweeping topic. Atlantic history is metahistory, encompassing as it does some three or four hundred years and stretching through Europe, Africa, South America, the Caribbean, and North America. It is also a story filled with tales of exploration, greed, bondage, and freedom. Atlantic history is a hot topic from what I've gathered, what with books like Marcus Rediker's "The Many Headed Hydra" gaining quite a lot of attention in the academic world. Then again, maybe I think it's a pressing subject since I've read several books on the theme for a class at school.

Curtin focuses on the rise and spread of the plantation complex, which he calls an "entity," beginning with the discovery of sugar in the Mediterranean during the time of the Crusades. Located primarily on the island of Cyprus, Europeans harvested sugar there for roughly two hundred years. With the reconquest of the Levant by Muslims, growers and consumers sought out new sources of the product. Enter the slow move into the New World and the introduction of a plantation structure that was feudalistic in nature, relied on slave labor, and was controlled by a political system overseas. The "true" plantation existed solely for profit, for supplying goods for distant markets, and needed slaves to operate the fields because the European populations had not yet overcome the numerous diseases and hardships found in the harsh climes of South America, the Caribbean, and Africa. Had Europeans merely waited until they built up immunity to diseases, argues Curtin, it's quite possible slavery as we recognize it today might never have existed. He also posits the interesting observation that plantations in the American South were not "true" plantations and as such receive little mention in his articles. He's more interested in the large European concerns spreading like a plague through South America and the Caribbean.

Curtin doesn't solely examine the structure of the plantation, although he does spend some time discussing the geography of a typical sugar plantation, the types of buildings found there, how the goods went to market, and how the same forms adapted to different climates. He throws in a detailed examination of the African slave trade, how it arose, who participated in it (both Europeans and Africans readily engaged in the selling of human beings), and argues that the decline and fall of powerful African states led to an increase in the number of people available for the slave markets. The author also argues that the plantation, no matter what its location, represented a form of "cultural demography" in that the Europeans who built them moved into a region and supplanted the local population (most of them died) with non-native inhabitants. The racial and social composition of our world today is largely a result of the plantation system and the demographic changes it wrought. It's an amazing claim and one that, if accepted, equals in importance the barbarian migrations that rocked the Roman world in the fourth and fifth centuries.

Curtin postulates some theories to help explain the demise of the plantation complex, too. He contends that the democratic revolutions in the New World and Europe put an end to these exploitative economic enterprises, primarily the series of rebellions that resulted in an independent Haitian state in 1804 but also including the American and French Revolutions. Even moderate attempts at democratization in England helped bring about the abolishment of slavery (remember, American plantations don't count) and thus sealed the plantation complex's doom. Also lending a hand was the emergence of the European Enlightenment, which tended to look at non-western lands and people as "exotic," a view that planted the seeds for later anti-slavery movements and increased attention to what was going on in the mother country's backwaters. By the 1880s Brazil was freeing slaves to SAVE money because droughts and laws aimed at preventing the importation of new slaves decreased their value to the point that it was too expensive to keep them around.

"The Rise and Fall of the Plantation Complex" makes abundant use of detailed maps and graphs, something that, as incredible as it sounds, many history books fail to do. I did have two quibbles with the book. The first is the atrocious editing, or should I say lack of editing, that plagues nearly every page of this book. Errors are so numerous that the flow of the text is seriously hampered. And none other than Cambridge University Press published it! My second problem centers on Curtin's complaints about "Eurocentric" history and how historians ought to look beyond that bias. That might have been a problem in 1990 when the book first appeared, but even a cursory glance at the history section in the local bookstore today will reveal dozens of titles written from a decidedly non-European point of view. Despite these niggling problems, Curtin's book is a good read for both historians and interested laypersons (laypeople?) intrigued by the subject.

Illuminating dissection of the embryonic "global economy."
Despite being laced with annoying typos (this is from Cambridge Univ. Press?), I found the substance of the book to be most informative. The slave-labor sugar/cotton/tobacco plantation is a familar feature of early modern history, and is usually encountered in regional histories of, say, the Caribbean, or Brazil, or the United States. But this book traces the "plantation complex" from its beginnings in the eastern Mediterranean, on Cyprus, through its spread across the Atlantic, to its final last gasps in this century. People who are used to thinking of "slave plantations" exclusively in the context of the United States will be disappointed. For reasons explained by the author, his primary focus is on the sugar plantations of the New World--these tended to be purer examples of the phenomenon. He also spends a good deal of time analyzing the impact on African societies and economies; material which I found especially instructive. The account of the stepwise demise of slavery in Brazil was also very enlightening, especially how emancipation became an economic opportunity for entire classes of slaveholding plantation owners in the 1870's, similar to "mass layoffs" today. I think this book is crucial to understanding where the "New World" stands today--racially, economically and socially. You just have to ignore the typos.

Illuminating dissection of the embryonic "global economy."
Despite being laced with annoying typos (this is from Cambridge Univ. Press?), I found the substance of the book to be most informative. The slave-labor sugar/cotton/tobacco plantation is a familar feature of early modern history, and is usually encountered in regional histories of, say, the Caribbean, or Brazil, or the United States. But this book traces the "plantation complex" from its beginnings in the eastern Mediterranean, on Cyprus, through its spread across the Atlantic, and its final last gasps in this century. People who are used to thinking of "slave plantations" exclusively in the context of the United States will be disappointed. For reasons explained by the author, his primary focus is on the sugar plantations of the New World--these tended to be purer examples of the phenomenon. He also spends a good deal of time analyzing the impact on African societies and economies; material which I found especially instructive. The account of the stepwise demise of slavery in Brazil was also very enlightening, especially how emancipation became an economic opportunity for entire classes of slaveholding plantation owners in the 1870's, similar to "mass layoffs" today. I think this book is crucial to understanding where the "New World" stands today--racially, economically and socially. You just have to ignore the typos.