Racial Capitalism and the Workhouse–Plantation Nexus in the Atlantic World

Bibliographic Data

ID10962011
AuthorsAndrew Williams (0000-0001-8724-0856, School of Geography and Planning Cardiff University UK, corresponding author), Jon May (0000-0001-7439-9200, School of Geography Queen Mary University of London UK)
Year2025
Volume57
Issue5
Pages2015-2044
Publication date2025-09-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueAntipode (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0066-4812 • E-ISSN: 1467-8330
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/anti.70038
OpenAlexW4411137203
LanguageEN
Citations received1
References cited104

This paper re‐examines the British workhouse within the framework of racial capitalism and the Atlantic world. Traditionally understood as a domestic mechanism for managing poverty and labour in an era of industrial capitalism, we argue the workhouse was deeply intertwined with global systems of racial exploitation and accumulation from the 17 th to the 19 th centuries. Tracing the workhouse's connections to Britain's colonial plantations, the transatlantic slave trade, and the circulation of finance, goods, ideas, and people in the Atlantic world, the paper challenges understandings of the workhouse's purely domestic function. Instead, the workhouse and plantation are understood as constitutively interlinked—forming a “workhouse–plantation nexus” which operated as a key component in shifting articulations of racial capitalism. Understanding this nexus reconfigures understandings of welfare histories that continue to shape racialised welfare systems and racial capitalism more broadly and is crucial for reparative justice

Capitalism · Economic growth · Economics · Economy · Nexus (standard · Political economy · Political science · Poorhouse · Poverty · Sociology · Australian History and Society · Historical and Cultural Archaeology Studies · Historical Economic and Social Studies · Law

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