Bennett, M.D. orcid.org/0000-0003-3351-5927 (2022) Caribbean plantation economies as colonial models: the case of the English East India Company and St. Helena in the late seventeenth century. Atlantic Studies, 20 (4). pp. 508-539. ISSN 1478-8810
Abstract
In the 1680s the English East India Company (EIC) sought to develop a plantation economy in its South Atlantic colony of St. Helena, using the Caribbean island of Barbados as a colonial model. The EIC’s attempt to develop Barbadian-style plantations on St. Helena demonstrates the global reach of the Caribbean sugar colonies and their importance as an exemplar for English imperial projects in the early modern period. Colonial theorists working outside the remit of the EIC even sought to expand the Caribbean plantation system beyond the Cape of Good Hope in this period, highlighting how English overseas expansion was an interconnected phenomenon which defies rigid categorization along regional lines. Yet the failure of the EIC’s top-down plan for St. Helena also underscores how both historical contingencies and local factors were central to the success of colonial plantation, and that misunderstanding these conditions could undermine the best-laid plans and models.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2022 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. |
Keywords: | Caribbean slavery; English East India Company; Atlantic world; Indian Ocean world; Barbados; St. Helena; slavery studies |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Sheffield |
Academic Units: | The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Arts and Humanities (Sheffield) > Department of History (Sheffield) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Sheffield |
Date Deposited: | 07 Oct 2022 15:26 |
Last Modified: | 26 Jun 2024 14:01 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Informa UK Limited |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.1080/14788810.2022.2034569 |
Related URLs: | |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:191460 |