Plantation workers1966

The lives of plantation laborers are usually depicted in terms reminiscent of eighteenth-century soldiering - nasty, brutish, and short. While the structures governing their lives varied from place to place and over time, the authoritarian and coercive nature of the plantation system itself remained pervasive. Recent research has shown, however, that the responses of plantation workers to the demands of their workplace were in fact quite variable, from acquiescence to outright rebellion, from collaboration with management to attempts to carve out private lives offering a sense of self-esteem. By focusing on the relationship between resistance and accommodation, Plantation Workers provides the first systematic examination of the kinds of responses offered to the plantation regime. The...