town life in Europe, new markets and a new way of life were cre-
ated, and the manor could not compete. The decline of the manor
can be seen first in England where land is favored with cheap water
transportation. As England expanded her domestic and foreign trade,
her geographical advantages became even more important. The
manorial system could not compete in this new economy; it had to
adjust to another or disintegrate. Conversely, the plantation de-
veloped only when new markets arose and created a demand for
staple crops. The essential difference, then, between the manor and
the plantation is one of market relationships.

The New World plantation developed in areas of accessible mar-
kets: along coastal regions, inland waterways, archipelagoes, and sea
islands, locations from which staples could reach foreign markets.
The plantation was an instrument in the growth of trade and in-
dustrial development, and can be viewed as a frontier region in the
world community. The frontier, in this sense, is an area "toward
which capital and management move" and from which "products are
swept into world markets." Since labor is the first requisite for the
plantation system, laborers must necessarily be imported if the
native population cannot successfully supply the laboring force, or
if there is a labor shortage.

In America, the native Indian could not be successfully employed;
thus, "armies" of Negro slaves from Africa were imported to serve
as the laboring force to sustain the plantation system. To govern
these "armies of laborers," a social order had to be devised to mold
the "raw human material" and "to build up attitudes, work habits
and skills adequate to give the plantation institutional standing." In
time, the system became a customary arrangement, automatically re-
inforcing itself. The planter played the feature role in the evolution
of this social order. His lineal roots were in the hard-driving mer-
chant class of Europe. He was the entrepreneur who entered the
business of planting to make money. In the New World he was free
to import laborers and to impose new disciplines and controls. The
planter could destroy a society and reduce its members to a state of
slavery in order to "reconstitute human material into a social order
consistent with his purpose." ² The classic slave plantation of the

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