From the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries, plantations in the Caribbean, South America, and the southern United States played a central role in shaping the Atlantic economy and have served as a model for extractive systems across the modern global countryside. Although the connections between the collapse of slave-based Caribbean regimes and modern commodity frontiers are well-known, this workshop aims to reevaluate the origins, structures, and broader implications of plantations beyond the Atlantic world.
We are interested in projects that:
● Study agricultural estates from late antiquity through the early modern era.
● Investigate links between resource use and forms of strong dependency in non-European contexts.
● Explore the environmental dimensions of the plantation and its hinterlands, from questions of materiality to non- human agency.
● Consider the linkages between plantations and other realms of economic behavior, i.e, finance and consumption.
● Address theoretical questions of spatiality and temporality (second slavery, for example)
The workshop will feature panel discussions in which early-career scholars will be paired with established researchers who will serve as moderators to foster productive, in-depth dialogue. The event will take place at the BCDSS in Bonn, one of Europe’s leading centers for the study of slavery and dependency. This event is organized by Bonn Center for Dependency and Slavery Studies and by the History and Theory Working Group.