n8 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES 



essentially agricultural and is not concentrated in a large building.' 

 (Report, p. 349.) 



The plantation has behind it a long history. It was the creation of the 

 English overseas, beginning with the plantation of Ulster, extending to 

 America and finding its modern home in the East. In old usage the word 

 is synonymous with colony ; and as Cunningham well says, ' English 

 colonisation was, in its beginning and in its growth, the expansion of the 

 landed interest.' 1 Now in early Canada and the early relations of England 

 with India we are confronted not with plantations but with factories and 

 forts, factories for trade and forts for the protection of trade. The plan- 

 tation flourished in the West Indies and on the American sea-board, and 

 was the economic instrument whereby colonies were established there. 

 The Commissioners of Trade and Plantations embraced the two sides of 

 imperial economy, trade by sea and plantation of the land. 



On the mainland the first planted commodity was tobacco, which so 

 monopolised the life of the southern colonies that they were called the 

 tobacco colonies. Sugar held a similar pre-eminence in the West Indian 

 islands. From the end of the seventeenth century the range of plantation 

 produce was widened on the mainland. In 1694 rice was introduced 

 into South Carolina from Madagascar; in 1745 indigo into South Carolina 

 from Montserrat in the French West Indies ; in 1794 sugar, the main 

 produce of the West Indies, into Louisiana ; in 1797, most crucial of all, 

 sea-island cotton into Georgia from the West Indies via the Bahamas. 

 But already before 1800 on the mainland, in contrast with the West Indies, 

 the plantation had ceased to be the only form of agriculture exploited by 

 settlers. The planter employing hired labour, at first white indentured 

 labour and before long coloured slave labour, found a rival in the white 

 settler employing only his family and himself. The free settler won in 

 the end, and his triumph furnished the outstanding crisis of American 

 social history. He was essentially a pioneer, and as the interior of the 

 continent was settled, he and his type prevailed increasingly. The 

 plantation, it was observed in early Virginia, hugged the tide water, 

 whilst the free settlers pushed inland ; this was typical of all plantation 

 history. Apart from the short-lived reign of the great ranches, with their 

 cattle kings, and of the bonanza wheat farms, the unit of enterprise in 

 American agriculture has been small ; and when the North by its victory 

 in the Civil War ended slavery, it dissolved the plantation into similar 

 small parts. The integrated enterprise of the slave owner gave place to 

 a loose system under which tenants held on money or shares from 

 indigent landlords and lived in a state of debt either to these landlords 

 or to strong commercial middle-men. In the West Indies, as in Cuba, 

 the sugar plantations survived, but the slaves freed in 1833 would not 

 work properly on them, and their survival into modern times was only 

 made possible by the introduction of coolie labour from the East. Our 

 colonial empire is a great producer of sugar to-day, and the sugar plan- 

 tation, though it exists in places, does not predominate on the whole. 

 In all cases the organisation of production centres round the factory. 

 But in the West Indies and Mauritius sugar factories buy both from 



1 W. Cunningham, Growth of English Industry and Commerce, vol. ii. pp. 1 19-120. 



