plantation era
Pre-Civil War South
The plantation era refers to the period in American history, roughly from the early 1600s through the Civil War, when large agricultural estates worked by enslaved people dominated the Southern economy and social order.
The term appears in discussions of antebellum architecture, cuisine, and culture: plantation era mansions, plantation era recipes.
It often carries nostalgic connotations that critics argue sanitize the brutal realities of slavery.
- antebellumBefore a war's start
- whipStrikes or aerates
- fieldArea of specialty
- slaveryOwnership of people
- cash cropsPlants grown for profit
soil · sweat · peonage · colonialism · manumission · Creole culture · Spanish moss · oral histories · culinary traditions · racial segregation · transatlantic slave trade · auction block · slave code · forced migration · sharecropping · folklore · mercantilism · Nat Turner
plantation eraReconstruction
Post-1865 national reunification period
Jim Crow era · industrial era · antebellum era · post-emancipation · colonial period
plantation eraemancipation
Release from legal bondage
freedom · Reconstruction · civil rights era · racial equality · industrial capitalism
plantation eraegalitarian society
Group with equal status
racial equality · civil rights movement · democratic society · liberation