Plantation Kingdom

This book explores how global market demand for staple crops like tobacco, rice, sugar, and cotton shaped the plantation system and labor practices in America from the colonial period through the late nineteenth century. It examines how these commodities enriched landowners and brought them power, while also detailing how fluctuating markets could devastate the Southern economy. The book also considers the practical limits of human agency in improving race relations when many individuals were entangled in the staple-crop economy.