Colonial Virginians were not terribly precise about the term "planter." There was no threshold they would have cited, although they themselves would have know who was who in the social pecking order. There were small, middling, large, and great planters. Depending on when and where you were in the Tobacco Coast, someone with two servants and a slave was doing pretty well, probably cultivating more like 10-12 acres and ultimately producing 3,600-6,000 pounds of tobacco worth anywhere from 7.5 to as much as 25 pounds Sterling, which by Virginia standards would have put the planter in at least the upper middle range. The real wealth disparities - and the social distinctions that went with that - came in the first three decades of the eighteenth century, which were the critical years for determining who had the capital necessary to buy slaves, to increase the scale of production, and even to diversify. By the time the antebellum period rolled around, agriculture in Virginia had diversified to an extent (especially with the advent of more intensive livestock practices) that many more Virginians probably called themselves farmers, whether they planted tobacco and corn or farmed wheat. There also was a tendency in the early national and Jacksonian eras to cast off some of the former trappings of title and to identify with the common folk in at least an outward appeal to democratic egalitarianism. The operative term there is "outward." So there definitely was an evolution in the terminology. Also, Virginia was not South Carolina; they were very different cultural realms. Comparing the two on this issue is, well, like comparing tobacco and tidewater rice cultivation. The scale of the former never approached the scale of the latter. I'm not an expert in the Low Country, but I dare say that given the labor-intensive nature of wet rice, having anything less than a couple of dozen slaves would not have been feasible. There was a very different reality in Virginia, where most agricultural operations were on a much smaller scale but nonetheless profitable in their own way. ___________________________________________ Dr. David S. Hardin Assistant Professor of Geography Department of Biological and Environmental Sciences Longwood University Farmville, Virginia 23909 Phone: (434) 395-2581 e-mail: [log in to unmask] ******************** "For as Geography without History seemeth a carkasse without motion, so History without Geography wandreth as a Vagrant without a certaine habitation." John Smith, 1627 ________________________________________ From: Discussion of research and writing about Virginia history [[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Paul Finkelman [[log in to unmask]] Sent: Monday, December 17, 2007 11:19 AM To: [log in to unmask] Subject: Re: definition of a planter if the only definition is one who planted tobacco, then someone with two servants and a slave who planted an acre of tobacco would be a "planter" which is silly. In fact, there were VERY FEW planters even in the antebellum period; that is why being a planter meant something -- power and wealth. 20 may be arbitrary, especially for the early colonial period when there were still (mostly white) indentured servants. But after about 1710 in VA and SC planters were those with increasing numbers of slaves; and of course what you planted is not solely the issue. After the revolution some planters appear to have moved into wheat (as well as tobacco); they were still planters. Paul Finkelman President William McKinley Distinguished Professor of Law and Public Policy Albany Law School 80 New Scotland Avenue Albany, New York 12208-3494 ______________________________________ To subscribe, change options, or unsubscribe please see the instructions at http://listlva.lib.va.us/archives/va-hist.html