Table of Contents
What was the main goal for plantation owners?
The main economic goal for large plantation owners was to earn profits. Such plantations had fixed costs – regular expenses such as housing and feeding workers and maintaining cotton gins and other equipment.
Why did plantation wives learn to keep financial records?
Why do you think the plantation wives learned to keep the financial records? The owner was away often and they were capable of reading, writing, etc. What was the purpose of the slave codes?
What were some of the responsibilities of plantation wives quizlet?
What did the plantation owners wife’s responsibilities included what? supervising the plantation’s buildings and the fruit and vegetable gardens.
How can you tell that the owner of this plantation was wealthy?
How did plantation owners measure their wealth? By the amount of enslaved workers they had.
Are there still plantations in America?
At the height of slavery, the National Humanities Center estimates that there were over 46,000 plantations stretching across the southern states. Now, for the hundreds whose gates remain open to tourists, lies a choice. Every plantation has its own story to tell, and its own way to tell it.
What were prime field hands?
Slaveholders also developed an equivalence unit called “the prime field hand.” They assigned certain capabilities to the prime hand, such as expected production per day.
What were some of the responsibilities of plantation wives?
She was in charge of running domestic activities in the house, caring for her children, and being a loving and loyal wife. They were expected to smoothly run the house, wisely choose the meals, and prepare for social events. Caring for slaves was also a major part of Southern mistresses responsibilities.
What were the effects of the growing demand for labor?
What were the effects of the growing demand for labor? Slaves increased as trade increased. What role did the region’s river play in the cotton trade? It was a way to travel for trade.
What was the treatment of slaves on the plantation?
Plantation slaves were expected to work as and when their owners and ‘overseers’ dictated. To a marked degree, their treatment depended on the individuals in charge. Yet the most brutal aspect of their lives was not so much personal ill-treatment (though there was plenty of that), but the system itself.
Why was the plantation system so successful in the south?
Though wealthy aristocrats ruled the plantations, the laborers powered the system. The climate of the South was ideally suited to the cultivation of cash crops, and King James had every intention of profiting from the plantations. Tobacco and cotton proved to be exceptionally profitable.
Who was an anthropologist who studied the plantation system?
Douglas V. Armstrong is an anthropologist from New York whose studies on plantation slavery have been focused on the Caribbean. In the Caribbean, as well as in the slave states, the shift from small-scale farming to industrial agriculture transformed the culture of these societies, as their economic prosperity depended on the plantation.
How did the slave trade lead to the expansion of the plantation?
Later, when the British began rice cultivation in the Carolinas, they again turned to the plantation model and the number of slaves grew rapidly: by 1750, 40,000 had been trafficked there. This massive expansion of the enslaved population of the Americas was all made possible, of course, by the transatlantic slave trade.