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Rethinking the fall of the planter class

Rethinking the fall of the planter class
Rethinking the fall of the planter class
This issue of Atlantic Studies began life as a one-day conference held at Chawton House Library in Hampshire, UK, and funded by the University of Southampton. The conference aimed, like this issue, to bring together scholars currently working on the history of the British West Indian planter class in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and to discuss how, when, and why the fortunes of the planters went into decline. As this introduction notes, the difficulties faced by the planter class in the British West Indies from the 1780s onwards were an early episode in a wider drama of decline for New World plantation economies. The American historian Lowell Ragatz published the first detailed historical account of their fall. His work helped to inform the influential arguments of Eric Williams, which were later challenged by Seymour Drescher. Recent research has begun to offer fresh perspectives on the debate about the decline of the planters, and this collection brings together articles taking a variety of new approaches to the topic, encompassing economic, political, cultural, and social history
planters, slavery, caribbean, abolitionism, decline theory
1478-8810
1-17
Petley, Christer
8575b3f5-b694-44a2-a70e-aa715a74381a
Petley, Christer
8575b3f5-b694-44a2-a70e-aa715a74381a

Petley, Christer (2012) Rethinking the fall of the planter class. [in special issue: Rethinking the Fall of the Planter Class] Atlantic Studies, 9 (1), 1-17. (doi:10.1080/14788810.2012.636991).

Record type: Editorial

Abstract

This issue of Atlantic Studies began life as a one-day conference held at Chawton House Library in Hampshire, UK, and funded by the University of Southampton. The conference aimed, like this issue, to bring together scholars currently working on the history of the British West Indian planter class in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and to discuss how, when, and why the fortunes of the planters went into decline. As this introduction notes, the difficulties faced by the planter class in the British West Indies from the 1780s onwards were an early episode in a wider drama of decline for New World plantation economies. The American historian Lowell Ragatz published the first detailed historical account of their fall. His work helped to inform the influential arguments of Eric Williams, which were later challenged by Seymour Drescher. Recent research has begun to offer fresh perspectives on the debate about the decline of the planters, and this collection brings together articles taking a variety of new approaches to the topic, encompassing economic, political, cultural, and social history

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More information

e-pub ahead of print date: 12 January 2012
Published date: March 2012
Keywords: planters, slavery, caribbean, abolitionism, decline theory
Organisations: History

Identifiers

Local EPrints ID: 200395
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/200395
ISSN: 1478-8810
PURE UUID: 1a4d73dd-b1f4-4b04-a460-9b90458bd00c
ORCID for Christer Petley: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0002-0616-1871

Catalogue record

Date deposited: 24 Oct 2011 16:23
Last modified: 15 Mar 2024 03:29

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