THE PLANTATION MODEL

The plantation society model emerged partly as a reaction to Arthur Lewis’s strategy for
industrialization and partly as a result of the search for deeper causes of underdevelopment in the
region.

“The theory of plantation economy by Best and Levitt represented the most sophisticated version
of Latin American structuralist view of dependency. The theory of plantation economy consists
of a historical and structural analysis of the evolution of the plantation system in the Caribbean
from the early seventeenth century to the modern period. In analyzing the long term
development of dependency in the Caribbean, Best and Levitt stressed that their primary interest
lay in isolating the institutional structures and constraints which the contemporary economy has
inherited from the plantation legacy. The economists suggest that the different stages in the
evolution of the Caribbean plantation economy should be viewed in the “contemporary
perspective of successive layers of inherited structures and mechanisms which condition the
possibilities of transformation of the present economy.” They posited that the classical
plantation economy of the slave era and its modern variants have functioned as a mechanism for
locking the various territories of the Caribbean into a series of dependency relationships with a
shifting cast of European metropolitan powers and the United States. The economists explained
that the theory of the plantation economy “is the study of the plantation sector and its relation
with both the outside world and the domestic economy which provides essential insights into the
mechanism of Caribbean economy.” They claimed that the development of plantation economy
was effected initially by political association but was maintained by the operations of the
predominant economic institutions, which typically are subsidiaries or affiliates of metropolitan
enterprises.” (full extract from Rose, 2002)

Why did the plantation garner so much attention? At what point did it become a unit of analysis?
Answers can be found when one traces the development of work on plantation societies. In
discussing Orlando Patterson’s work on plantation society during the slave era, Susan Craig
(1981) drew attention to his nihilist view that there was an absence of society in Jamaica. His
assertion was that if one was to take the definition of what constitutes a society into
consideration, then Jamaica could not be considered as such but was a collection of autonomous
plantations, each a self-contained community with its own internal mechanisms of power.
He draws attention to the gross aspects of slavery, its closeness to the Hobbesian state of nature,
its brutalization of masters and slaves, a past where little was created and only futility for the
future for the Jamaican masses (children of Sisyphus).

Susan Craig questions some of the themes in Patterson’s work which recur in other conceptions
of Caribbean societies. She questions

(i) the notion of the insularity of plantations - in an interdependent world, it is

delusional to believe that any collectivity would be totally autonomous.
(ii) The existence of unified societies when it is not clear that individuals or
groups order their beliefs in this way. This would mean that all known
societies which are fraught with conflict are non-societies.
(iii) The data used to describe slave activities (mating, religion, recreation,
folklore) – this contradicts his thesis of disintegration and disorganization.

Patterson tends to ignore the degrees of freedom which allowed slaves to form their own
economic, cultural and political practices. He considers a contribution to civilization from
Caribbean people to be sterile as well as all efforts at social transformation. His view was that
“once a slave always a slave”. The struggles of oppressed Caribbean people belie the validity of
Patterson’s analysis and conclusions.

His importance to the discourse lies in his highlighting the significance of the plantation in the
slave era as a unit of analysis which led other scholars to begin stressing the significance and
pervasive influence of the plantation in the New World and some even argued that these societies
were plantation societies.

R. T. Smith constructs three models of Guyanese society corresponding to (i) the period of
slavery, (ii) the century after emancipation and (iii) the post 1940 era. He indicates that the
models are heuristic devices which lack explanatory power. Like Patterson he contends that
each plantation during slavery was an effective unit of society as well as a unit of production.
He equated the plantation to a total institution; in effect it was a miniature society.

Other writers have applied the plantation model to the contemporary period. There are two
variants to this model; a weak variant proposed by Patterson, Horowitz and Wagley and a strong
variant proposed by the New World Group. In the former the plantation is characterized by
unstable family organization, hierarchical class relations, low level of community solidarity and
mobile populations often recruited for seasonal work.

Susan Craig however notes that the plantation is not always the independent variable which
causes some of these features. The plantation is compatible with both conflict and cohesion in
community life e.g. in Trinidad racial and political conflict, competition for jobs and state
patronage are important factors in the generation of conflict at the community level. Even the
attempts to polarize the features of plantation and peasant have failed.

The strong variant of the model is put forward by Beckford who draws on the analysis of
structural dependency in the Caribbean as described by Lloyd Best and Kari Levitt. In reviewing
the policy prescriptions offered by Demas as the way forward for the region, Best argued that
Demas’s analysis and his subsequent policies, suffered from a basic fallacy as it focused almost
exclusively on natural variables such as size, while manipulable policy variables were all but
overlooked. He states that Demas fails to make the case that size places economies at a
disadvantage in the exploitation of their own resources. What was needed was a mode of analysis
which was derived from systematic examination of the instruments that control Caribbean
economies (Heron, 2004). In formulating the model, Best and Levitt drew on the structuralist and
neo-Marxist arguments developed in Latin American and beyond. They outlined 3 models
which exemplified the major characteristics of Caribbean economies; pure plantation of the slave
era (1600-1838), plantation economy modified in the century after emancipation (1838-1938)
and plantation economy further modified after 1940 with the strategy of industrialization by
invitation (1938-present).

The central thesis of Best and Levitt is that the Caribbean economies have undergone little
structural change since the establishment of the plantation economy, which remains, as it has
always been, passively responsive to external demand and investment which comes almost
exclusively from metropolitan sources (Keane, 2011). The thesis draws attention to common
structural and institutional characteristics of the Caribbean economies, for which the theory and
model of the plantation economy may be generalized and seeks to further ostracise neoclassical
models, their assumptions and policy implications, and in their place attempts to put the
underpinnings of the plantation economy, which, better characterises Caribbean economies, and
for which they explore the resultant policy implications (Keane, 2011). Through the
development of a plantation-economy model the authors seek to better elucidate more
appropriate policy prescriptions to launch and sustain dynamic growth trajectories; they
recognise that ‘passive’ integration into the global economy is not a viable option. The
characteristics of the three models are as follows.

Pure Plantation Economy

Rose, E. (2002) examines the different phases of the plantation economy as outlined by Best and
Levitt. The pure plantation economy phase (1600-1838) originated from the old mercantilism
period which began with European exploration and colonization of the Caribbean at the end of
the fifteenth century. It is significant in that it established the framework for the Caribbean as an
overseas economy of distant metropolitan powers, where most decisions concerning the
territories were made. Imperialism, mercantilism and slavery ensured that the income generated
from plantation production served to promote industrialization and development in metropolitan
countries. As a consequence, dependence on outside forces was instituted into the Caribbean
economy from the outset. Apart from land all the requirements of the plantation economy were
imported. The metropolitan powers provided organsiation, capital, transport, supplies, markets
and even slave labour from West Africa.

This phase was characterized by the establishment of slave-based plantation institutions for the
production of export staples. The economies did not experience any considerable or sustained
relief from their dependence on the export staple. The local economy was composed entirely of
the plantation sector with no internal interdependence. Each plantation operated as an
independent unit that was linked to a metropolitan Merchant House through a joint-stock trading
company, and as a result, each secured its supplies from and disposed of its output through its
own particular metropolitan agent. As a result there was no structural interdependence in within
the pure plantation economy system, either between production units or between production and
consumption units. Lloyd Best outlines the process:

The characteristic … of the slave plantation economy is really a segmental

economy consisting of a number of firms, each of which is a self-sufficient

 unit almost completely independent of the rest of the rest of the economy …

the slave economy was such that it created only subsistence income for the

residents of the plantation …and it could not generate spread effects for

economic development in the [region] because of the almost total absence

of linkages outside of the unit itself.

This limitation relegated the Caribbean to a mere locus of production – a kind of production that
did not compete with metropolitan countries. It helped to produce food for Europe’s expanding
working classes and raw materials for its industries.

Pure plantation economy was conceived as part of the metropolitan economy and served as a
highly successful and profitable enterprise for its European colonizers in its foundational period.
On the other hand, it laid the foundation for the region’s underdevelopment and economic
dependence and its subordinate position in within the international division of labour. Pure
plantation economy formed the matrix from which successive modification derived and from
which dependency in the region evolved. As Best and Levitt and other plantation theorists have
observed, the basic mechanisms of plantation economy continue to operate in the Caribbean,
albeit with some important changes in its characteristics. According to Girvan (2005), the pure
plantation economy model has three essential characteristics (i) demonstration that these
hinterland societies are structurally part of an overseas economy of the industrial metropole; (ii)
that such societies comprise a locus of total economic institutions and (iii) that value flows in
such a system are typically incalculable.

Plantation Economy Modified

Adjustments were forced upon the plantation during the first half of the nineteenth century
according to Best and Levitt. The period was characterized by two principal modifications: the
abolition of slavery and the removal of imperial preference for sugar by Britain as it entered the
free trade era. These developments led to other adjustments such as the emergence of a peasant
class of mainly former black slaves on non-plantation land, a new wave of mainly indentured
labour mainly from India and a rationalization of the plantation sector. The ex-slaves did not
have any other skill or training than tilling the land. Not only were the ex-slaves in completion
with the planter class for land but they also competed for other resources, especially farming
equipment, credit, marketing facilities and domestic markets. Government was geared to the
maintenance of the plantation sector and thereby checked the expansion of the peasantry and of
domestic agriculture.

Plantation Economy Further Modified

Plantation economy further modified is characterized by import substitution industrialization, the

growth of new mineral export sectors like bauxite and petroleum and the extensive promotion of
tourism as an industry, all these activities fueled by an inflow of foreign capital investment.
Despite the high rates of growth in this era, many of the features of the pure plantation era are
replicated in this modern period, notwithstanding the prominent role played by the state in most
of the economic initiatives developed in the post-1945 era. For Best and Levitt, the transnational
corporations which have come to play such a dominant role in the Caribbean economy serve just
as effectively to integrate the region just as effectively into the metropolitan economic system as
did the joint stock trading companies of the pure plantation era. Far from breaking the plantation
legacy, the post war development strategy of the region has only reinforced the constraints of
Caribbean economic history. The defining feature of Caribbean development which still remains
is the high level of foreign ownership and control.

Beckford sought to derive from these economic models and from other sociological sources, the
features corresponding to plantation society. He distinguished between the plantation as a social
system in the territory in which it is located - the internal dimension and the plantation as an
economic system both in the territory of its location and in the wider world community - the
external dimension (Craig, 1981). He stressed the all-pervasive character of its internal
dimension. The plantation can be identified by considerations such as its share of national
economic aggregates in the region, its contribution to national employment, income, government
revenues and foreign exchange earnings; its effects on social and political structure; and the
psychological impact on the minds and outlook of the local population (Rose, 2002). Beckford
outlined the characteristics of plantation societies today.

(i) They are culturally plural and the constituent races are brought together by
economic activity. They also exhibit rigid patterns of stratification.
(ii) Political power is exercised on behalf of the planter class inspite of black political
parties and trade unions.
(iii) The legacy of loose and weak local communities has inhibited the development of
local government and the state is highly centralized.
(iv) The brittle social order is maintained through three integrative mechanisms:
(a) The energies of the races are harnessed to the needs of the plantation,
(b) Educational expansion has led to upward social mobility for the lower
classes, producing an Eurocentric intelligentsia which acts as inspiration
for others in the lower classes who want to achieve the same privileges,
(c) Nationalism against metropole creates solidarity.

Beckford contends that underdevelopment of plantation economies in the Caribbean and

elsewhere and development in metropolitan countries are aspects of the same phenomenon and
that the emergence of the vertically integrated plantation enterprise has served to preserve the
character of the slave plantation system with little or no structural change in the local economies.

By definition, the plantation economy was a dependent economy that resulted from Caribbean
land, African slave labour and European capital as a settlement, plantation institutions brought
together enterprise, capital, and labour from various parts of the world into the Caribbean where
land was free and available for production of a particular staple. In the process a system of
authority and control was vested in the institution.

According to Craig, Beckford’s argument assumes that nothing has changed since emancipation
except for some slight degree of individual mobility among black people. The Best/Levitt
models, point to the structural continuities in Third World societies and show that in the era of
dependent industrialization, plantation agriculture is of diminishing importance. Craig notes, that
the diversification into tourism, assembly line manufacturing and mineral exports by some
countries in the region have given rise to new sets of relationships. This is reflected in the
growing tertiarization in Caribbean societies where a shift from agriculture is reflected in the
tremendous urbanization especially in larger territories.

With the shift away from plantation agriculture, the planter/merchant oligarchies have diversified
their activity, reinvesting in transport, tourism, insurance and finance, real estate, construction
and manufacturing often in subservient partnership with foreign capital.

CRITIQUE OF THE MODEL

Craig also draws attention to a number of areas which need urgent attention; “the internal
conflicts and alliances within classes, the relationships between foreign and local capitalists, the
role of the state in investment and employment, the changing composition of the working class
and the increasing differentiation within it, the growth since 1838 of the highly diverse
intermediate and petty bourgeois strata and the fate of the peasantry.”

The plantation thesis then, needs logical and empirical modification if it is to apply to the range
of societies in the contemporary Caribbean. Edward Brathwaite sees the attempt to derive
structure from the plantation experience as being too simple and reductionist because it ignores
the “inner plantation” (the rise and fall of various groups and classes, their economic,
ideological, political and cultural practices and expressions and their struggles over time.

Problems of categorization, the lack of specificity of variables, the provisions of snapshots of

Caribbean societies at particular points in time without clear understanding of the process and
structure of social change and the failure to explore the full range of subtypes which develop
after Emancipation and in the post war era are all limitations of this model.

The strengths of the model lie in its ability to identify on a regional and multidisciplinary basis,
the structural links with the metropole, their modification and continuity overtime and the
theoretical connections with other Third World societies. The plantation legacy can be seen in
the plantationesque institutions which still prevail, manifesting in the dominance of multinational
corporations, the exploitation of local labour sources and dependence on externally produced
goods and services.

REFERENCES
Craig, Susan. “Sociological Theorising in the English-Speaking Caribbean: a Review.”
Contemporary Caribbean: a Sociological Reader. Ed. Susan Craig. Vol. 2. Port of Spain: Susan
Craig, 1982. 143-80.

Girvan, N. (2005) Kari Polanyi Levitt and the Theory of Plantation Economy in Contemporary
Perspective in Reclaiming Democracy: The Social Justice and Political Economy of Gregory
Baum and Kari Polanyi Levitt – Mageurite Mendell (Ed.). McGill-Queen’s University Press,
Canada.

Heron, T. (2004) The New Political Economy of United States-Caribbean Relations: The
Apparel Industry and the politics of NAFTA Parity. Ashgate Publishing Ltd., England.

Keane, J. (2011). A review of Essays on the Theory of the Plantation Economy: A Historical and
Institutional Approach to Caribbean Economic Development. By L. Best and K. L. Levitt.
Kingston, Jamaica: University of the West Indies Press, 2009. Development Policy Review.
Overseas Development Institute. Development Policy Review 29 (1)

Rose, Euclid (2002). Dependency and Socialism in the Modern Caribbean: Superpower
Intervention in Guyana, Jamaica and Grenada, 1970-1985. Lexington Books, United States