Planter class
Robert Carter III of Nomini Hall . Thomas Hudson, 1753. The planter class , known alternatively in the United States as the Southern aristocracy , was a socio-economic caste of pan-American society that dominated seventeenth- and eighteenth-century agricultural markets through the forced labor of enslaved Africans. The Atlantic slave trade permitted planters access to inexpensive labor for the planting and harvesting of crops such as cotton, coffee, tea, cocoa, sugar cane, sisal, oil seeds, oil palms, rubber trees, and fruits. In the American South, planters maintained a distinct culture characterized by its similarity to the manners and customs of European nobility with an emphasis on chivalry, gentility and hospitality. The latter becoming a marked trait of modern Southern society. After the American Civil War, many in this class saw their wealth reduced as enslaved Africans were freed and land was confiscated. Other plantations were converted to sharecropping. Later some plantations...