ABSTRACT
Plantation economies were constructed in those parts of the western hemisphere where European expansion took the form of the establishing of large-scale farms supplying metropolitan markets with tropical or semi-tropical staples. In a plantation mode of production four attributes are present. First, large-scale exportoriented agriculture dominates the society. Second, the labour-force requirements of that agricultural sector are greater than can be supplied through the functioning of an unrestricted domestic labour market. Extra-market mechanisms, therefore, must be present to provide the required labour to the plantations and these mechanisms are dominant in defining the class relations of the society. Finally, a specific culture both emerges from and reinforces the class relations which are articulated in this way.
