ABSTRACT
This chapter examines another peculiar aspect of the mode of production of colonial slave plantations: the twofold structure composed of a mercantile economy and a natural economy and the correlation between these two segments. The natural economy only included the production of goods intended for consumption by the establishment’s personnel, from the master and his family to the field and domestic enslaved people. The most important part of the natural economy was growing foodstuffs. The master and his family could obviously consume imported goods at will: wine, olive oil, wheat flour, spices, cheeses, etc. In the early seventeenth century, when a few urban centers had been consolidated on the coast, an internal market of foodstuffs produced in the colony developed. Except for the coffee, everything else was consumed within the plantation to feed the human population and more than 300 pigs and 200 pack animals and horses.
