Sure.

Basically, I argue in the book that the plantation is a new kind of institution in the world economy that we really see the first kind of full-fledged example of on the Portuguese colonial island of Sao Tome, which is off the coast of West Africa in the mid-1500s.

And what I think is different about plantations from previous kinds of agriculture and from all other kinds of agriculture that we've seen is a number of factors.

It's basically kind of...

The opposite of how farming was supposed to look in the 16th and 17th centuries.

So your typical farmer in the English countryside or the French countryside or the Chinese countryside was typically security first.

And because they were mostly concerned with avoiding famine and economic ruin.

Sure.

But, uh, if at all possible, can you also address the significance? You make an argument about shared freedoms in the, uh, Malcontent movement in Georgia, and if you can address that, it would be swell.

Well, um, I think I'll talk, um, about Georgia and the Malcontents first, if that's okay.

Um, and then maybe I'll, I'll probably have you re-reask the Virginia question.

Probably forget.

[laughs] Um, so the, the Georgia Malcontents are this really interesting group that, um, re-readers who read the book, this is often one of the stories that they bring up to me after have, after having read it.

Um, and that-that's always interesting to me to see kind of what sticks with, with readers.

Um, so I'm, I'm not surprised that you, that you sort of snipped it out as well.

And then connected to that, uh, [chuckles] if you could discuss, uh, you know, how your book kind of deals with the causes of the r- uh, American Revolution, um, that'd be a good, uh, pivot point for the latter half of the interview.

If you can address first your criteria for plantations, and then how you begin the book with this new capitalist strategy, as well as the New England carrying trade, if you want to address it.

Sure.

Basically, I argue in the book that the plantation is a new kind of institution in the world economy that we really see the first kind of full-fledged example of on the Portuguese colonial island of Sao Tome, which is off the coast of West Africa in the mid-1500s.

And what I think is different about plantations from previous kinds of agriculture and from all other kinds of agriculture that we've seen is a number of factors.

It's basically kind of...

the opposite of how farming was supposed to look in the 16th and 17th centuries.

So your typical farmer in the English countryside or the French countryside or the Chinese countryside was typically security first.

Sure.

Sure.

Basically, I argue in the book that the plantation is a new kind of institution in the world economy that we really see the first kind of full-fledged example of on the Portuguese colonial island of Sao Tome, which is off the coast of West Africa in the mid-1500s.

And what I think is different about plantations from previous kinds of agriculture and from all other kinds of agriculture that we've seen is a number of factors.

It's basically kind of...

The opposite of how farming was supposed to look in the 16th and 17th centuries.

So your typical farmer in the English countryside or the French countryside or the Chinese countryside was typically security first.

And because they were mostly concerned with avoiding famine and economic ruin.

Sure.

If you could address the shift to a Black slave majority, um, in the colony of Virginia, um, first, and then if at all possible, that's my central question, but, uh, if at all possible, can you also address the significance? You make an argument about shared freedoms in the, uh, Malcontent movement in Georgia, and if you can address that, it would be swell.

Well, um, I think I'll talk, um, about Georgia and the Malcontents first, if that's okay.

Um, and then maybe I'll, I'll probably have you re-reask the Virginia question, probably forget.

[laughs] Um, so the, the Georgia Malcontents are this really interesting group that, um, re-readers who read the book, this is often one of the stories that they bring up to me after have, after having read it.

Um, and that-that's always interesting to me to see kind of what sticks with, with readers.

Um, so I'm, I'm not surprised that you, that you sort of snipped it out as well.

Um, so Georgia, surprisingly to many of my Georgia students, was actually established to be a kind of anti-South Carolina.

And then connected to that, uh, [chuckles] if you could discuss, uh, you know, how your book kind of deals with the causes of the, uh, American Revolution, um, that'd be a good, uh, pivot point for the latter half of the interview.

And what did they discover about the graveyard, Dan? It's a revelation for how we've not dealt with our history.

Yeah, so Baldwin Hall, to add another layer of irony, houses the Department of Archaeology.

And it is right across the street from my office window.

And what I didn't know for the first three or four years I was teaching at University of Georgia is what I was looking at when I looked at Baldwin Hall wasn't the unacknowledged burial ground of enslaved people from Athens, Georgia.

In 2015, they started a major renovation and expansion project, the university did.

And in doing the digging, they found a number of interred bodies.

And they first claimed that they were, I don't know what their evidence for this was, but the university claimed they were, quote, of European descent.

Did it work in 1866? That was Reconstruction.

Was that purposeful? Had it always been in Cuba?

No, Cuba actually becomes a plantation system somewhat late.

It's not until the end of the 1700s that they involve themselves fully into sugar production.

One of the big reasons that they really get involved is the Haitian Revolution.

For people who don't know the story, up until 1791, the French colony of Saint-Domingue, current day Haiti and the Republic of Santo Domingo, and the Dominican Republic, excuse me, that French island is the number one sugar producer on the planet.

Fabulous fortunes are being made there.

But in connection with the French Revolution that breaks out, a massive slave uprising occurs in 1791.

the state political machinery.

Who was Cobb, Professor?

Cobb was a lawyer, a very important politician in the Confederacy.

Howell Cobb had a plantation in central Georgia and had been one of the authors of the Confederate Constitution, which was one of the most pro-slavery documents you'll ever find.

Is there a moment that happened, or was it over many years? Oh, I...

I think it actually happened somewhat quickly.

So Sherman passes Field Order 15.

Basically, on Sherman's march, just like in the American Revolution, about 10,000 people who were still suffering in enslavement in Georgia died.

took the opportunity when Union troops passed by of fleeing their owners.

Who was she?

Suki was a woman enslaved by Landon Carter, the son of quote-unquote King Carter, the largest landowner and slave owner in colonial Virginia.

Landon Carter inherited, I think, I think something like 50,000 acres.

I could be wrong.

He becomes also one of the largest slave owners and tobacco planters in the colony.

Very important politically.

And yet when it comes to activities in the fields, he understands the expertise and knowledge of the people he enslaves and knows at a certain level that his own fortunes, his own respect, his own power is premised on that.

Was that on purpose or was that financial considerations? Some people overcommitted to the fields and had to sell slaves.

Professor, I did not know Cornwallis was sheltering how many African Americans, how many who were believed to have escaped the slave and were going to have freedom with the English?

Oh, well, I mean, there were tens of thousands who fought with the British against the Americans because the British forces had offered them the promise of freedom if they would fight on the British side.

But even beyond that, so the campaigns leading up to the siege of Yorktown have to do with Benedict Arnold leading British troops on these raids up the James and Rappahannock rivers, mostly to... to hobble Virginia by hobbling the center of its economy, which was the tobacco plantations.

Because they're doing that, thousands of enslaved people who have been told that when the British come, they may set you free, are willing to take their last chance and escape from their owners and follow British forces as they go back down the James and Rappahannock towards Yorktown.

So they are so they're following them and they all end up sheltering inside the fort of Yorktown together.

And because the British forces don't get the support they need from the sea, in part because the British were very worried that the French were going to try to take Jamaica.

So they take some of their supporting ships away because guess what? the British care way more about keeping Jamaica than they care about keeping Virginia because there's so much more profit from the sugar industry.

And so they had to make a choice whether they were going, what did they, why did they want to fight for the big planters? There's already alienation that we call, today, we make a big deal about the billionaires and us, but that's right there at the beginning of America.

Professor, did George Washington know that? Did James Madison know that? Did Patrick Henry know of that statement? And did they refute it or did they agree with it?

I'm not sure if they specifically knew of it as very literate men.

I imagine they did, but they certainly believed that even a lot more strongly than John Locke did.

They were a lot more sure about that than John Locke was, it turns out.

I think what's important about—so he writes that in 1670, right? I think the words of that phrase are very important because first of all, he uses the word Negro, which is a borrowing from the Portuguese, Negro, who had, before the British were ever even involved, began to create this new kind of racial category of a person who had no rights to be respected and who had no history to reckon with.

And that was this sort of new fiction of the Negro.

So he's able to use that, but he also makes sure to say, of what opinion or religion so ever.

Did they understand they were chasing, in modern parlance, they're chasing the tail?

And they didn't ask, and the question is still debatable, where does rice come from? Who brought the rice to America, Professor?

There's been there's been a lot of debate about about that.

But I could I just trace back really quick and talk about and just talk briefly about where the great house metaphor came from.

Of course.

So the title of my book came from a sermon given by a formerly enslaved preacher to his recently emancipated congregants, I think in 1866.

And someone observes him giving this sermon, and he says to the men and women and children listening to him, You will never feel like a free woman.

You will never feel like a free man if you don't escape the shadow of the great house.

That's something that's either learned or is that a prejudice brought from Europe? Where did it come from?

Good evening.

Oh, good evening.

Thanks for having me.

Wofford Camp is an agronomist from South Carolina who moves out to California in the 1920s to basically pioneer a sugar boom, a cotton boom to replace the declining cotton production of the old south states of Georgia, South Carolina and Alabama.

So by the end of the 1920s, California actually produces more cotton than the state of Georgia.

And so my argument in the book is that we actually have probably the cutting edge of plantation capitalism at that moment is actually in the Central Valley of California.

So it is it is no surprise that so many of the planters in California actually came from the Deep South.

Is that because they did not have value? They did not value their health to sustain them? They did not pay much for them to begin with? The profit margins? Why were they so indifferent to their health?

More later, Daniel Rood.

Anthony Johnson, if I recall correctly, was actually born in Africa and brought across the Atlantic on a slaving vessel, arrives in 1619.

But because notice the year, that's at a moment where none of those laws about enslavement had really been elaborate articulated yet.

So he, like like many people in this charter generation of enslaved people, that's a quote of Ira Berlin, find a way to to buy their own freedom.

They get freedom from their owner.

It is legal for them to own land.

Anthony Johnson and some of his relatives actually become quite wealthy.

Daniel Rood, much more of this tonight.

He's taking one of his famous American tours, and he is on a train heading south in Virginia, and he sees a mother and two children who are black and who had just been sold away from the husband and father and noted that the mother was sorrow's picture, I think he says, and that the children cried the whole way.

And so he's actually Charles Dickens is actually seeing up close the way that this large scale overland slave trade, which replaced the transatlantic slave trade after 1808, is affecting individual people.

And what did they discover about the graveyard, uh, Dan? It's a revelation for how we've not dealt with our history.

Yeah.

So, um, Baldwin Hall, uh, uh, to add another layer of irony, uh, houses a department of archaeology, and it is right across the street from my office window.

Uh, and what I didn't know for the first three or four years I was teaching at University of Georgia is what I was looking at when I looked at Baldwin Hall was in the unacknowledged burial ground of enslaved people from Athens, Georgia.

Um, w- in two thousand and fifteen, they started a major renovation and expansion project, uh, the university did, uh, and in doing the digging, they found a number of interred bodies.

Um, and they first claimed that they were-- They-- I don't know what their evidence for this was, but the university claimed they were, quote, "of European descent." Several members of the Black community in Athens, uh, differed strongly with that because they had always heard that enslaved people, maybe even their own ancestors, were actually buried there.

The Black community had to push very hard for there to be a DNA analysis done, and it was found indeed, um, that the vast majority of the over a hundred people that seemed to have been buried there were of African descent, and most likely, since almost everyone in Athens who was Black was enslaved, that, that they, that they had been enslaved.

Right.

Was that purposeful? Had it always been in Cuba?

No, Cuba actually becomes a plantati- plantation system somewhat late.

Um, it's not until the end of the 1700s, um, that they involve themselves fully into sugar production.

Uh, o- one of the big reasons they, that, um, that they really get involved is the Haitian Revolution.

Um, for people who don't know the story, um, up until 1791, the French colony of Saint-Domingue, uh, which is current-day Haiti and San- and the Republic of Santo Domingo, uh, and the Dominican Republic, excuse me, um, that, that French island is the number one sugar producer on the planet.

Fabulous fortunes are being made there.

But in connection with the French Revolution that breaks out, a massive slave uprising occurs in 1791.

Is that a correct assumption?

Who was Cobb, Professor?

Uh, Cobb was, was a lawyer, um, a very important politician in the Confederacy.

Uh, Howell Cobb, um, had a plantation in central Georgia, um, and had been one of the authors of the Confederate Constitution, which was one of the most pro-slavery documents you'll ever find.

Is there a moment that happened, or was it over many years?

Oh, I th- I think it actually happened somewhat quickly.

Um, so, so Sherman passes, uh, Field Order Fifteen.

Basically, on Sherman's March, just like in the American Revolution, um, about ten thousand people who were still suffering in, in enslavement in Georgia took the opportunity when Union troops passed by of fleeing their owners.

They often took, they often took wagons and horses and mules with them, and they're following as this train behind Sherman's army, and Sherman has no idea what to do because most of them, many of them are in fairly bad conditions e-economically and haven't had access to food and, and medical care.

Who was she?

Uh, Sukie was a, a woman enslaved by Landon Carter, the, the son of, of, quote-unquote, "King Carter," the largest landowner and, and slave owner in colonial Virginia.

Uh, Landon Carter, uh, inherited, I think, I think something like fifty thousand acres.

I could be wrong.

Uh, he becomes also one of the largest slave owners and, uh, tobacco planters in the colony, um, very important politically.

And yet when it comes to activities in the fields, he understands the expertise and knowledge of the people he, he enslaves and knows at a certain level that his own fortunes, his own respect, his own power is, is premised on, is premised on that.

And there's a, there's one woman named, named Sukie, uh, who in a weird way speaks to him like a peer.

Do I say that correctly?

Daniel Rood.

Uh, he's taking a t-- he's taking one of his famous American tours, uh, and he is on a train, um, heading, heading south, uh, in Virginia, and he sees, uh, a mother and two children, um, who, who are Black and who had just been sold away from the husband and, and, and father, um, and noted that, uh, the, the mother was sorrow's picture, I think he says, and that the children cried the whole way.

And so he's actually...

Charles Dickens is actually seeing up close, um, the way that this large-scale overland slave trade, which replaced the transatlantic slave trade after eighteen oh eight, um, is, is affecting individual people.

Professor, I did not know Cornwallis was sheltering how many African Americans, how many who have-- who were believed to have escaped the slave and were going to be, uh, have freedom with the English?

Oh, well, I mean, there, there were tens of thousands who fought with the British, uh, against the Americans, uh, because, uh, the British forces had offered them the promise of freedom if they would fight on the British side.

Um, but e-even beyond that, so the, the campaigns leading up to the Siege of Yorktown have to do with Benedict Arnold leading British troops on these raids up the James and Rappahannock Rivers, mostly, mostly to, to hobble Virginia by hobbling the center of its economy, which was the tobacco plantations.

Because they're doing that, thousands of, uh, of enslaved people who have been told that the, that when the British come, they, they may set you free, are willing to take their last chance and escape from their owners and follow British forces as they go back down the James and Rappahannock towards Yorktown.

Um, so they are-- so they're following them, um, and they all end up sheltering inside the Fort of Yorktown together.

Um, and because, um, the British forces don't get the support they need from the sea, um, in part because the British were very worried that the French were gonna try to take Jamaica.

Uh, so they take some of their supporting ships away because guess what? The British care way more about keeping Jamaica than they care about keeping Virginia because there's so much more profit from the sugar industry.

Why, why did they wanna fight for the big planters? There's already alienation that we call today, we make a big deal about the billionaires and us, but that, that's right there at the beginning of America.

Professor, did George Washington know that? Did James Madison know that? Did Patrick Henry know of, of that statement, and did they refute it or did they agree with it?

I'm not sure if they specifically knew of it.

As very literate men, I, I imagine they, they did, but they certainly believed that even a lot more strongly than John Locke did.

Um, they were a lot more sure about that than, than John Locke was, it, it turns out.

Um, I think what's important about...

So he writes that in sixteen seventy.

I think the words of that phrase are very important because first of all, he uses the word Negro, which is a borrowing from the Portuguese, negro, uh, who had, before the British were ever even involved, began to create this new kind of racial category of a, of a person who's, who had no rights to be respected, uh, and that, a-and who had no history to reckon with, and that was this sort of new fiction of the Negro.

In sixteen seventy-six, do you believe there's an echo in seventeen seventy-six?

That's something that's either learned, or is that a prejudice brought from, uh, from Europe? Where did it come from?

Great question.

Um, what I, what I argue in the, in the book is that the, the version of, of slavery that we, that we usually associate with, you know, w- with the U.S. South, and the version of racism that comes from that, I argue actually wouldn't have happened in the same way without, without plantations.

Because before you have these first plantation booms, let's say in Barbados or in South Carolina, [sniffs] excuse me, or, or in Virginia, most, most poor people in the early colonies are unfree in some way.

Um, one of your own ancestors, you were telling me, John, was, was himself an indentured servant.

1661, yes, to the, to the Tidewater colonies.

Um, and, uh, we also have, you know, c- convict workers, um, all different kinds of indentures.

The, the category of slave was a very loose and vague legal category before plantations really take off.

Good evening.

Well-- Oh, good evening.

Thanks for having me.

Um, Wofford, Wofford Camp, uh, is an agronomist from South Carolina, uh, who moves out to California in the nineteen twenties, um, to basically pioneer a sugar boom-- a, a cotton boom to replace the decline in cotton production of the old South states of Georgia, South Carolina, and Alabama.

Um, so by the end of the nineteen twenties, California actually produces more cotton than the state of Georgia.

Um, and so m-my argument in the book is that we actually have probably the cutting edge of plantation capitalism at that moment is actually in the Central Valley of California.

So it is, it is no surprise that, uh...

Mm.

Daniel Rood.

Anthony Johnson, uh, if, if I recall correctly, was actually, uh, born in Africa and brought across the Atlantic on, on a slaving vessel, arrives in sixteen nineteen.

But because, notice the year, that's at a moment where none of those laws about enslavement had really been, uh, elaborate-- articulated yet.

So he, like m- like many people in this charter generation of enslaved people, that's, uh, a quote of, of Ira Berlin, um, find a way to, to buy their own freedom.

They get freedom from their owner.

The-- It is legal for them to own land.

Anthony Johnson and some of his relatives actually become quite wealthy.