A slavocracy (from ''
slave
Slavery is the ownership of a person as property, especially in regards to their labour. Slavery typically involves compulsory work, with the slave's location of work and residence dictated by the party that holds them in bondage. Enslavemen ...
'' + ''
-ocracy'') is a
society
A society () is a group of individuals involved in persistent social interaction or a large social group sharing the same spatial or social territory, typically subject to the same political authority and dominant cultural expectations. ...
primarily ruled by a
class
Class, Classes, or The Class may refer to:
Common uses not otherwise categorized
* Class (biology), a taxonomic rank
* Class (knowledge representation), a collection of individuals or objects
* Class (philosophy), an analytical concept used d ...
of
slaveholders, such as those in the
southern United States
The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...
and
their confederacy during the
American Civil War
The American Civil War (April 12, 1861May 26, 1865; also known by Names of the American Civil War, other names) was a civil war in the United States between the Union (American Civil War), Union ("the North") and the Confederate States of A ...
. The term was initially coined in the 1830s by
northern abolitionists
Abolitionism, or the abolitionist movement, is the political movement to end slavery and liberate enslaved individuals around the world.
The first country to fully outlaw slavery was France in 1315, but it was later used in its colonies. T ...
as a
term of disparagement and subsequently used in wider senses, including as a term for the planter class of such a society itself.
[.] Slavocracies are also sometimes known as plantocracies, after "
planter" used as a term for the owners of
plantations.
A number of European colonies in the
New World
The term "New World" is used to describe the majority of lands of Earth's Western Hemisphere, particularly the Americas, and sometimes Oceania."America." ''The Oxford Companion to the English Language'' (). McArthur, Tom, ed., 1992. New York: ...
were largely slavocracies, usually consisting of a small European
settler population relying on a predominantly West African
chattel slave population as well as smaller numbers of
indentured servant
Indentured servitude is a form of Work (human activity), labor in which a person is contracted to work without salary for a specific number of years. The contract called an "indenture", may be entered voluntarily for a prepaid lump sum, as paymen ...
s, both European and non-European in origin. In the
Caribbean
The Caribbean ( , ; ; ; ) is a region in the middle of the Americas centered around the Caribbean Sea in the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic Ocean, mostly overlapping with the West Indies. Bordered by North America to the north, Central America ...
,
the slaves were primarily used
to produce sugar, while in
North America
North America is a continent in the Northern Hemisphere, Northern and Western Hemisphere, Western hemispheres. North America is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the southeast by South Ameri ...
the slaves were primarily used
to produce cotton. These
proslavery
Proslavery is support for slavery. It is sometimes found in the thought of ancient philosophers, religious texts, and in American and British writings especially before the American Civil War but also later through the 20th century. Arguments in ...
societies attempted to resist the
abolitionist
Abolitionism, or the abolitionist movement, is the political movement to end slavery and liberate enslaved individuals around the world.
The first country to fully outlaw slavery was Kingdom of France, France in 1315, but it was later used ...
movement and subsequently relied on
freed black and poor white
sharecropper
Sharecropping is a legal arrangement in which a landowner allows a tenant (sharecropper) to use the land in return for a share of the crops produced on that land. Sharecropping is not to be conflated with tenant farming, providing the tenant a ...
s for labor following
abolition
Abolition refers to the act of putting an end to something by law, and may refer to:
*Abolitionism, abolition of slavery
*Capital punishment#Abolition of capital punishment, Abolition of the death penalty, also called capital punishment
*Abolitio ...
.
One prominent organization largely representing and collectively funded by a number of British slavocracies was the "
West India Interest The West India Interest lobbied on behalf of the Caribbean sugar trade in Britain during the late eighteenth century.
Beginning in the 17th century, Caribbean colonies appointed paid lobbyists, who were called colonial agents, to act on behalf of ...
", which lobbied the
British parliament
The Parliament of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is the supreme legislative body of the United Kingdom, and may also legislate for the Crown Dependencies and the British Overseas Territories. It meets at the Palace of ...
on behalf of planters. It is credited with delaying the abolition of the slave trade from the 1790s until 1806–1808 and then delaying emancipation into the 1820s and 1830s, extracting reparations for the lost "property" in a policy known as "amelioration".
See also
*
Confederate States of America
The Confederate States of America (CSA), also known as the Confederate States (C.S.), the Confederacy, or Dixieland, was an List of historical unrecognized states and dependencies, unrecognized breakaway republic in the Southern United State ...
*
London Society of West India Planters and Merchants
The London Society of West India Planters and Merchants was an organisation established to represent the views of those engaged in the trade with the Caribbean that held a diverse range of views on the region, ranging from London-based merchants ...
*
Slave Power
The Slave Power, or Slavocracy, referred to the perceived political power held by American slaveholders in the federal government of the United States during the Antebellum period. Antislavery campaigners charged that this small group of wealth ...
, a term used by American abolitionists in the 1840s and 1850s to argue that Southern agrarian interests wielded disproportionate political power in the United States
*
Slavery in Brazil
Slavery in Brazil began long before the Colonial Brazil, first Portuguese settlement. Later, colonists were heavily dependent on indigenous labor during the initial phases of settlement to maintain the subsistence economy, and natives were of ...
*
Sugar plantations in the Caribbean
Sugar plantations in the Caribbean were a major part of the economy of the islands in the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries. Most Caribbean, Caribbean islands were covered with Sugarcane, sugar cane fields and mills for refining the crop. The main ...
*
Maroon (people)
Maroons are descendants of African diaspora in the Americas, Africans in the Americas and islands of the Indian Ocean who escaped from slavery, through flight or manumission, and formed their own settlements. They often mixed with Indigenous pe ...
*
American gentry
The American gentry were rich landowning members of the American upper class in the colonial Southern United States.
The Colonial American use of ''gentry'' was not common. Historians use it to refer to rich landowners in the South before ...
*
Planter class
The planter class was a Racial hierarchy, racial and socioeconomic class which emerged in the Americas during European colonization of the Americas, European colonization in the early modern period. Members of the class, most of whom were settle ...
References
{{Reflist
Sources
* B.W. Higman. "The West India Interest in Parliament," ''Historical Studies'' (1967), 13: pp. 1–19.
* See the historical journal: ''Plantation Society in the Americas'' for a host of pertinent articles.
* Steel, Mark James (PhD Dissertation). ''Power, Prejudice and Profit: the World View of the Jamaican Slaveowning Elite, 1788-1834,'' (University of Liverpool Press, Liverpool 1988).
* Luster, Robert Edward (PhD Dissertation). ''The Amelioration of the Slaves in the British Empire, 1790-1833'' (New York University Press, 1998).
Slavery in the United States
Slavery in the Caribbean
Plantations
Colonialism