DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY
MODULE HANDBOOK
2009-2010
PLANTERS AND PLANTATION SOCIETIES IN BRITISH
AMERICA AND THE UNITED STATES, 1607-1865
Convenor: Professor Trevor Burnard
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Table of Contents
Context of Module
3
Module Aims
3
Intended Learning Outcomes
3
Syllabus Listing
4
Illustrative Bibliography
4
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Context of Module
This module may be taken by students on the MA in Race in the Americas, the MA in
History, the MA in Global History, the MA in Eighteenth Century Studies, or by any
taught Master’s student outside the History Department.
Module Aims
This module will examine the growth, development, maturation and decline of the
most significant class group in the plantation worlds of British America and the United
States in the period of slavery. It will connect the development of plantation societies
based on the labour of enslaved Africans and African Americans with the rise of a
planter class, characterised by a strong shared consciousness of themselves as a
political and cultural group. It will examine what were the salient characteristics of
planters as a group, how planters interacted with other whites, free blacks and
enslaved blacks and how these characteristics changed over time, especially after the
tumults of the American Revolution and the abolition of the slave trade. It will
conclude with a treatment of planters in the nineteenth century, examining their
relations with capitalism and paternalism and the legacies of the plantation system
once slavery was ended.
Intended Learning Outcomes

as part of their subject knowledge and understanding, recognize and evaluate
the main historiographical trends in scholarly writing about race and society in
British America and the United States

as part of their critical skills, identify the context and assess the significance of
contemporary source materials

identify and evaluate the processes of historical change as they affect and
inform social change and race ideologies

demonstrate a familiarity with historical methods, concepts and use of primary
and secondary historical source materials as these relate to the Americas
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Seminar Listing
Seminar 1:
Introductory Session – The Planter as a Social Type
Seminar 2:
Planters Without Slaves
Seminar 3:
The Plantation Revolution?
Seminar 4:
The Development of Planter Elites
Seminar 5:
Planters, Slave and Power
Seminar 6:
Planters, White Society and the Articulation of Whiteness
Seminar 7:
Revolutions and Abolitions
Seminar 8:
The Planter as Capitalist
Seminar 9:
The End of Planter Dominance
Illustrative Bibliography
Ira Berlin, Many Generations Come
Ira Berlin, Generations in Captivity
David B. Davis, Inhuman Bondage
Richard S. Dunn, Sugar and Slaves
S.D. Smith, Slavery, Family and Gentry Capitalism in the British Atlantic
Philip D. Morgan, Slave Counterpoint
William K. Scarborough, Masters of the Big House
Trevor Burnard, Creole Gentlemen
Anthony S. Parent, Foul Means
Robert Olwell, Masters, Slaves and Subjects
Max Edelson, Plantation Enterprise in Colonial South Carolina
Rhys Isaac, Landon Carter’s Uneasy Kingdom
Richard Follett, The Sugar Masters
William Dusinberre, Them Dark Days
John D. Garrigus, Before Haiti
Stephanie McCurry, Masters of Small Worlds
Eugene Genovese, The Mind of the Master Class
David Blight, Race and Reunion
Rebecca Scott, Degrees of Freedom
Trevor Burnard, Mastery, Tyranny and Desire
Christopher L. Brown, Moral Capital
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