ABSTRACT
Several consequences follow from the specialization of peripheral economies like Haiti in the production of a limited range of goods for export. In the renewed effort to understand the associated processes of development and underdevelopment, four models became highly appreciated: dependency theory, world-system theory, modes of production theory, and plantation economy theory. It was the perspective that became widely used by indigenous and foreign scholars to account for the peculiarities of the Caribbean economies. Plantation economies emerged in the Caribbean following its colonization by Western Europe in the seventeenth century and the introduction of African slavery as the dominant form of organization of labor. The metropolitan economies exercised monopoly control over the trade with the colonial plantation economies. The concept of plantation economy is useful in describing a particular form of dependency and underdevelopment and the internal organization and dynamics of that type of economy.
