Global Plantations in the Modern World: Sovereignties, Ecologies, Afterlives

Description

Taking a multidisciplinary and global approach, this edited book examines the dynamic role of plantations as productive, socio-political and ecological forms throughout imperial and post-colonial worlds spanning multiple and broad temporalities. Showcasing an expansive range of case studies across different geographies, the collection sheds light on the heterogeneity of plantations and offers insights into the afterlives, spectres and remnants of systems that have been analysed as schemes of production, extraction and authority. Focusing on the expansion of plantation systems throughout various political-economic and ecological projects, and across the modern (and post-modern) period, allows the authors to move beyond analyses that often deal with individual empires through human-centered lenses. The contributors explore resistance to the mechanisms of extraction and control that plantations and their afterlives demanded, shedding light on their excesses, contradictions, failures and deviations. Offering a comprehensive treatment of global plantations, this book provides valuable reading for researchers with an interest in the socio-political and environmental effects of colonialism and imperialism in their various guises. Chapters 1, 8 and 11 are available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com. Foreword Acknowledgments Praise for Global Plantations in the Modern World Contents Notes on Contributors List of Figures List of Tables 1 Introduction: Viewing Plantations at the Intersection of Political Ecologies and Multiple Space-Times Plantation Ecologies: Environmental Degradation, Segregated Human Relations and Racial Injustice The Afterlives of the Plantation: Old and New Insights Plantations as Sovereign Machines: Subject Formation, Relations of Patronage and the Intimacies of Power References Part I Revisiting the Caribbean: Genealogies for the Plantationocene 2 From Marrons to Kreyòl: Human-Animal Relations in Early Caribbean Introduction Inaugural Multispecies Encounters Provision Grounds and the Ambiguous Materiality of Freedom Counter-Plantation and Its Afterlives References 3 The Rise and Fall of Caporalisme Agraire in Haiti (1789–1806): Labor Perspectives Through the Plantation Complex Introduction Policing Emancipation, Preserving Plantation Revolutionary Citizenship Through Militarized Agriculture Land Concentration Limitations to Mobility Discipline and Labor Exploitation The Fall of Caporalisme Agraire and the Plantation Afterlives References 4 Cacos and Cotton: Unmaking Imperial Geographies on Haiti’s Central Plateau Introduction Andeyò Occupation Infrastructure Tropic of Cotton Transformations: The Land of Milk and Honey Conclusion References 5  Nostalgia for Oranges: Plantations as a Development Promise in Socialist Cuba The Socialist Plantation, a Matrix for a New Society The Scope of the Plantation: State Property as Revolutionary Sovereignty Tasting “Development” in Citrus Plantations Longing for Plantations, Desiring Normality Conclusion References Part II Continental and Pacific Americas: Multiple Subjectivities Between Control and Resistance 6 ‘[A] Continual Exercise of…Patience and Economy’: Plantation Overseers, Agricultural Innovation, and State Formation in Eighteenth-Century North America Introduction The Development of a Stereotype A Changing Agricultural Context Criticisms of Overseers and Overseer Responses Overseer Violence and State Formation Conclusion References 7 Inside the Big House: Slavery, Rationalization of Domestic Labor and the Construction of a New Habitus on Brazilian Coffee Plantations During the Second Slavery The Rationalization of Work, Spatial Division, and Occupations of Enslaved People on Coffee Plantations Domestic Slavery, Labor Specialization, and Slavocratic Habitus References 8 Plantation Colonialism in Late Nineteenth-Century Hawai‘i: The Case of Chinese Sugar Planters Introduction State Formation Processes and Chinese Migration Before 1874 Non-Western Planters and the Sugar Boom After 1874 Co-operative Production and the Case of Kohala, Island of Hawai‘i The Kohala Rebellion of 1891 Conclusion References Part III West Africa and Its Diasporas: Excavating Forgotten Pasts and Haunted Presents 9 The Materialities of Danish Plantation Agriculture at Dodowa, Ghana: An Archaeological Perspective Introduction Danish Plantation System in Ghana The Study Area Frederikssted Plantation Material Artefacts Drinking and Eating at the Plantation Barrel Hoops Royal Copenhagen Porcelain Stoneware Windmill Decorations Willow Pattern Semi-Porcelain Corned Beef and Sardine Keys Mineral Water Bottles and Tumbler Food-Related Bottles (Sauce and Pickle Bottles) Square Bottles (Gin/Schnapps Bottles) Cylindrical Bottles (Wine/champagne) Building Implements Screws with Washers Strap Hinges The Brick Hammer Axe (Splitting Maul) Padlock and Keys Farming Tools Machete Blade Ornamentation Whieldonware Pierced-Edge Porcelain Perfume Bottles Bedknobs Entertainment Ceramic Dolls Harmonica Rural Telephony Telegraph Wire Insulators Domestic/Industrial Chemicals (Poison Bottles) Cottage Industry (Beads and Sewing) Local Beads European/Imported Beads Sewing Machine Part Smoking at the Plantation Site European/Imported Smoking Pipes Local Smoking Pipes Household Tools/Items Cutlery Local Pottery Materials Faunal Remains Currency (Cowrie Shells) Accounting/Bookkeeping/Writing Conclusion References 10 “Sweet Mother”: The Neoliberal Plantation in Sierra Leone Introduction “Bold Experiments” Sweet Times at Magbass The Promise of Productive Life Conclusion References 11 “New Slavery”, Modern Marronage and the Multiple Afterlives of Plantations in Contemporary Italy Speaking of Slavery Today Before, Against and Beyond Echoes of the Middle Passage Coda: The Black Mediterranean, Modern Marronage and Their Shadows References Part IV South and South-East Asia: Indigenous Labor, More-Than-Human Entanglements and the Afterlives of Multiple Crises 12 The Multispecies World of Oil Palm: Indigenous Marind Perspectives on Plantation Ecologies in West Papua Destruction Parasitism Mutualism Conclusions Coda References 13 Colonial Plantations and Their Afterlives: Legal Disciplines, Indian Historiographies and Their Lessons. An Interview with Rana Behal Part V Afterword 14 Afterlives: The Recursive Plantation Modernities Mobilities Mutualities Waves References Index