ABSTRACT
The planters of Martinique, under constant pressure to reduce costs, obliged their slaves to produce goods for their own subsistence in their free time that is outside the time devoted to the plantations commercial crop. While provision-ground cultivation arose from the planter's attempts to reduce costs and create an interest for the slave in the well-being of the estate, it resulted in the formation of a sphere of slave-organized activity that became necessary for the operation of the plantation system. Provision-ground production and the activities associated with it developed within and through the antagonistic relation between master and slave. The condition for the autonomous development of provision-ground cultivation and marketing was the slave's appropriation of a portion of the labour time of the estate and its redefinition around their individual and collective interests, needs and values within and against the predominant slave relation.
