Slavocracy
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Aslavocracy(fromslave+-ocracy) is asocietyprimarily ruled by aclassofslaveholders,such as those in thesouthernUnited Statesandtheir confederacyduring theAmerican Civil War.The term was initially coined in the 1830s bynorthernabolitionistsas aterm of disparagementand subsequently used in wider senses, including as a term for the planter class of such a society itself.[1]Slavocracies are also sometimes known asplantocracies,after "planter"used as a term for the owners ofplantations.
A number of European colonies in theNew Worldwere largely slavocracies, usually consisting of a small Europeansettler populationrelying on a predominantly West Africanchattel slavepopulation as well as smaller numbers ofindentured servants,both European and non-European in origin. In theCaribbean,the slaveswere primarily usedto produce sugar,while inNorth Americathe slaveswere primarily usedto produce cotton.Theseproslaverysocieties attempted to resist theabolitionistmovement[citation needed]and subsequently relied onfreed blackand poor whitesharecroppersfor labor followingabolition.
One prominent organization largely representing and collectively funded by a number of British slavocracies was the "West India Interest",which lobbied theBritish parliamenton behalf of planters. It is credited with delaying the abolition of the slave trade from the 1790s until 1806–1808 and then delaying emancipation into the 1820s and 1830s, extracting reparations for the lost "property" in a policy known as "amelioration".[citation needed]
See also
[edit]- Confederate States of America
- London Society of West India Planters and Merchants
- Slave Power,a term used by American abolitionists in the 1840s and 1850s to argue that Southern agrarian interests wielded disproportionate political power in the United States
- Slavery in Brazil
- Sugar plantations in the Caribbean
- Maroon (people)
- American gentry
- Planter class
References
[edit]- ^"slavocracy,n.",Oxford English Dictionary,Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2023.
Sources
[edit]- B.W. Higman. "The West India Interest in Parliament,"Historical Studies(1967), 13: pp. 1–19.
- See the historical journal:Plantation Society in the Americasfor a host of pertinent articles.
- Steel, Mark James (PhD Dissertation).Power, Prejudice and Profit: the World View of the Jamaican Slaveowning Elite, 1788-1834,(University of Liverpool Press, Liverpool 1988).
- Luster, Robert Edward (PhD Dissertation).The Amelioration of the Slaves in the British Empire, 1790-1833(New York University Press, 1998).