ABSTRACT
Overseers arrived in North America in the very earliest years of colonisation. The final element in the emergence of the distinct management structures of Virginian and South Carolinian plantations was the diversification that characterised, especially, the latter half of the eighteenth century. The plantation management structure that emerged from these circumstances was noteworthy both for the degree to which it differed from the Caribbean model, especially in the presence of enslaved overseers and the extent of their role, and for the essential similarities evident between Virginia and South Carolina. Recruiting overseers to manage these increasingly complex plantation enterprises was a matter of serious concern for planters and their agents. The problems that planters encountered in finding and securing the long-term employment of capable managers eventually led them to challenge both the laws and racial mores of colonial slave society, and to sometimes use the enslaved in supervisory roles and appoint them to the position of overseer on their plantations.
