Editing Slavocracy

{{Short description|Ruling classes who profit from slavery}}
{{more citations needed|date=May 2019}}
{{Globalize|date=March 2024}} 

A '''slavocracy''' (from ''[[slavery|slave]]'' + ''[[government|-ocracy]]'') is a [[society]] primarily ruled by a [[Class (social)|class]] of [[slaveholders]], such as those in the [[Southern United States|southern]] [[United States]] and [[Confederate States of America|their confederacy]] during the [[American Civil War]]. The term was initially coined in the 1830s by [[northern United States|northern]] [[Abolitionism in the United States|abolitionists]] as a [[pejorative|term of disparagement]] and subsequently used in wider senses, including as a term for the planter class of such a society itself.<ref>{{citation |last= |first= |date=2023 |contribution=slavocracy, ''n.'' |contribution-url=https://www.oed.com/dictionary/slavocracy_n |url=http://www.oed.com |title=Oxford English Dictionary |publisher=Oxford University Press |location=Oxford }}.</ref> Slavocracies are also sometimes known as '''plantocracies''', after "[[Planter (plantation owner)|planter]]" used as a term for the owners of [[slave plantation|plantations]].

A number of European colonies in the [[New World]] were largely slavocracies, usually consisting of a small European [[settler colonialism|settler population]] relying on a predominantly West African [[Chattel slavery|chattel slave]] population as well as smaller numbers of [[indentured servant]]s, both European and non-European in origin. In the [[History of the Caribbean|Caribbean]], [[Slavery in the Caribbean|the slaves]] were primarily used [[history of sugar|to produce sugar]], while in [[British North America|North America]] [[Slavery in the United States|the slaves]] were primarily used [[history of cotton|to produce cotton]]. These [[proslavery]] societies attempted to resist the [[abolitionist]] movement{{citation needed|date=June 2021}} and subsequently relied on [[free black|freed black]] and poor white [[sharecropper]]s for labor following [[abolition of slavery|abolition]].

One prominent organization largely representing and collectively funded by a number of British slavocracies was the "[[West India Interest]]", which lobbied the [[Parliament of the United Kingdom|British parliament]] on behalf of planters. It is credited with delaying the abolition of the slave trade from the 1790s until 1806–1808 and then delaying emancipation into the 1820s and 1830s, extracting reparations for the lost "property" in a policy known as "amelioration".{{citation needed|date=June 2021}}

==See also==
*[[Confederate States of America]]
*[[London Society of West India Planters and Merchants]]
*[[Slave Power]], a term used by American abolitionists in the 1840s and 1850s to argue that Southern agrarian interests wielded disproportionate political power in the United States
*[[Slavery in Brazil]]
*[[Sugar plantations in the Caribbean]]
*[[Maroon (people)]]
*[[American gentry]]
*[[Planter class]]

==References==
{{Reflist}}

==Sources==
* B.W. Higman. "The West India Interest in Parliament," ''Historical Studies'' (1967), 13: pp.&nbsp;1–19.
* See the historical journal: ''Plantation Society in the Americas'' for a host of pertinent articles.
* Steel, Mark James (PhD Dissertation). ''Power, Prejudice and Profit: the World View of the Jamaican Slaveowning Elite, 1788-1834,'' (University of Liverpool Press, Liverpool 1988).
* Luster, Robert Edward (PhD Dissertation). ''The Amelioration of the Slaves in the British Empire, 1790-1833'' (New York University Press, 1998).

[[Category:Slavery in the United States]]
[[Category:Slavery in the Caribbean]]
[[Category:Plantations]]
[[Category:Colonialism]]