Here is one of the definitions of "Plantation" given in the Oxford English
Dictionary. It has more to do with colonization and ownership of the land
than any contemporary meaning of "plantation" does. Given the date of Rhode
Island's establishment, this is most probably the understanding that Rhode
Island's founders had for the word.
Martha Katz-Hyman
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4. a. A settlement in a conquered or dominated country; a colony. Also in
extended use. Now hist.
Chiefly with reference to the colonies founded in North America and on the
forfeited lands in Ireland in the 16th-17th centuries; also with reference
to the ancient colonies of Greece, etc.
1609 Instruccions in S. M. Kingsbury Rec. Virginia Company (1933) III. 15
You shall, for the choice of plantacions obserue two generall rulles..that
such places wch you resolue to build and inhabite vppon, haue at the leaste
one good outlett into the Sea. 1614 J. SYLVESTER Bethulia's Rescue I. 385
[Bees] Else-where to plant their goodly Colonies; Which keep, still
constant, in their new Plantation. 1622 J. SMITH (title) New Englands
trials... With the present estate of that happie plantation, begun by but 60
weake men in the yeare 1620. a1656 J. USSHER Ann. World (1658) VI. 169
Heraclea, a plantation of the city of Megara. 1705 in Early Rec. Providence,
Rhode Island (1903) XVII. 201 The which tree..is a bound Marke betweene the
sd. two Plantations of sd. Providence & Warwick. 1769 Junius Lett. (1820) i.
6 A new office is established for the business of the plantations. 1800 P.
COLQUHOUN Treat. Commerce & Police R. Thames xi. 328 All goods of the
produce of Ireland, and the British Plantations. 1865 C. MERIVALE Hist.
Romans under Empire (new ed.) VIII. lxiii. 42 Roman plantations, and
possibly military stations also reached even to the Dniester. 1910 P. W.
JOYCE Eng. as we Speak it in Ireland xiii. 302 Plantation, a colony from
England or Scotland settled down or planted in former times in a district in
Ireland from which the rightful old Irish owners were expelled. 1988 Oxf.
Illustr. Encycl. III. 179/2 Bitterness increased with the imposition of
Protestantism by Henry VIII and the establishment of ‘plantations’ of
English and Scottish settlers in Ulster under Elizabeth I.
b. A company of settlers or colonists. Obs.
1636 Public Rec. Colony of Connecticut (1850) I. 4 Every plantacion shall
traine once in every moneth. 1647 R. STAPYLTON tr. Juvenal Sixteen Satyrs
231 Ascanius..carrying forth a plantation of men,..found a white sow with 30
pigges sucking her. 1651 T. HOBBES Leviathan (1839) II. xxiv. 239 Those we
call plantations, or colonies..are numbers of men sent out from the
commonwealth, under a conductor, or governor, to inhabit a foreign country,
either formerly void of inhabitants, or made void then by war. a1715 BP. G.
BURNET Hist. Own Time (1724) I. 526 This revived among them [sc. the gentry]
a design..of carrying over a Plantation to Carolina.
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