ABSTRACT
The concept of plantation slavery as used in this chapter is limited to the form of social control and economic exploitation of non-European workers characteristic of the British Caribbean and American South during the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries. The development and longevity of plantation slavery differed in the British Caribbean and the American South, but the common origins of the slave populations, patterns of development, and communality of material culture are sufficient to allow comparative analyses. The ideas expressed here draw heavily from our research in Barbados (Handler and Lange 1978), as well as other studies of plantation contexts in the British Caribbean and North America (e.g., Armstrong 1982; Drucker 1979; Fairbanks 1974; Lees 1980; Mathewson 1973; Otto 1975; Pulsipher and Goodwin 1982; Singleton 1980).
