The Colonial Famine Plot

Slavery, Free Trade, and Empire in the French Atlantic, 1763–1791

Datos Bibliográficos

ID9969709
AutoresJoseph Horan (Florida State University, autor de correspondencia)
Año2010
Volumen55
NúmeroS18
Páginas103-121
Fecha de publicación2010-12-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaInternational Review of Social History (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0020-8590 • E-ISSN: 1469-512X
EditorialCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s0020859010000519
OpenAlexW2139439319
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas5
Referencias citadas22

This essay examines the use of famine-plot rhetoric in the course of disputes over free trade in the French Atlantic during the late eighteenth century. Seeking to discredit officially sanctioned trade monopolies, French plantation owners frequently suggested that the control exercised by metropolitan merchants over transatlantic commerce was responsible for food shortages among the enslaved population of the colonies. In reality, the planters themselves bore primary responsibility for malnutrition in the French Caribbean, thanks to their reliance on the slave trade and support for the expansion of plantation agriculture. While proponents of the colonial famine plot accepted that plantation slavery had made it impossible for the resources available in the colonies to sustain the growing enslaved population, they remained committed to the plantation system. In advocating expanded free trade as the best means to ensure the continued growth of the colonies, French planters anticipated a response to the environmental problems caused by colonial expansion that became increasingly prevalent among proponents of European imperialism during the nineteenth century

Agriculture · Archaeology · Atlantic slave trade · Colonialism · Economic history · Economic shortage · Economics · Economy · Empire · Famine · Free trade · Geography · Government (linguistics · International trade · Metropolitan area · Political economy · Political science · Population · Population growth · Rhetoric · Sociology · Colonialism, slavery, and trade · Demography · Historical Economic and Social Studies · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis · History · Law