Also known as: plantation machine, Plantation machine
Last updated: April 23, 2026
Burnard and Garrigus use the phrase for eighteenth-century Jamaica and Saint-Domingue at the height of plantation expansion. Their point is not merely metaphorical. Sugar had to be cut, hauled, crushed, boiled, cured, packed, and shipped on a schedule that made labor discipline and technical coordination inseparable. A plantation that fell out of sync lost cane, sugar quality, and profit.
machine
Cap-Français
Port-au-Prince
Saint-Domingue was the most productive plantation economy in the Atlantic world.
The counter-plantation system was the alternative economy enslaved people built alongside the plantation.
Atlantic Capitalism
Plantation Machine
Sugar Plantation
The Conceptual Tools Of The Plantation
Triangular Trade
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"Plantation Machine." Rasin.ai, 2026. https://rasin.ai/connections/concepts/plantation-machine. Accessed 2026-05-05.