Plantation

A plantation ( German: planting ) is a forestry or agricultural large-scale enterprise, which refers to the generation of a product ( monoculture ) has specialized for the world market. Typical products of plantations are perennial plants or perennial crops such as bananas, cotton, wood, palm oil, coffee, cocoa, tea, fruits, sisal, natural rubber, but also annual plants such as sugar cane. At a plantation often include elaborate facilities where the product is pre-processed. Plantations except in the tropics, cultivated in Mediterranean areas, such as the European Mediterranean, California and South Africa.

The owner of a plantation is referred to as a planter.

History

The word plantation (literally ' the planting of cuttings ' ( plantes ) ) was borrowed in the 17th century from French into Dutch and German, but today is a false friend. The term plantation as large planting corresponds to today's French and in English plantation (literally ' planting of cuttings ' ( plantes ) ).

Since the 7th century a first highly specialized plantation economy for the production of luxury crops in Mesopotamia had with Islam developed in the marshes of the Euphrates, taking use of African slaves, the Zanj, who had initially dry up the swamps. The profits on the long-distance trade income for sugar, cotton, dates and cloves contributed to the flowering of Islamic cities in Asia and Egypt. For example, all was introduced in Christian Europe as an expensive luxury item consumed sugar in the Middle Ages from the Islamic world.

The workers on the plantations were to the 19th century, often slaves, for example in the cotton and tobacco plantations of the American South as well as on the sugar plantations of the Caribbean and Latin America, which had been brought from Africa since the native Indian population Spanish by the system of " repartimiento " was almost completely decimated. The descendants of these ( freed ) slaves now make up a large part of the population of these regions dar.

After the abolition of slavery were from the former slaves mostly low-wage workers, working conditions remained essentially unchanged. In the rubber plantations of Malaysia and the tea plantations of Sri Lanka is often put a cheap labor from India or China.

Her best-known propagation experienced the plantations with the emergence of the European colonial empires, as from 1860 originated in Africa and Asia extended new plantations: sugar in Natal (South Africa ), tobacco in Sumatra, Rubber in Malaya and Cochinchina ( South Vietnam ), but also tea in Ceylon. Owners of the plantations were often foreigners, not seldom corporations that were guided by the operation of an administrator. Its officers or the owner belonged to the upper class of society, while the plantation workers were among the lowest. The colonial plantation was a phenomenon of global capitalism, which was to be found almost exclusively in tropical countries. In 1900, a wave of start-ups such plantations in Africa and Southeast Asia is observed.

After the independence of the former colonies, most foreign owners of the plantations were expropriated and in their place were locals or the state.

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