The planter class was a racial and socioeconomic class which emerged in the Americas during European colonization in the early modern period. Members of the class, most of whom were settlers of European descent, consisted of individuals who owned or were financially connected to plantations, large-scale farms devoted to the production of cash crops in high demand across markets in Europe and America. These plantations were operated by the forced labor of enslaved people and indentured servants and typically existed in subtropical, tropical, and somewhat more temperate climates, where the soil was fertile enough to handle the intensity of plantation agriculture. Cash crops produced on plantations owned by the planter class included tobacco, sugarcane, cotton, indigo, coffee, tea, cocoa, sisal, oil seeds, oil palms, hemp, rubber trees, and fruits. In North America, the planter class formed part of the American gentry.
As European settlers began to colonize the Americas in the 16th and 17th centuries, they quickly realized the economic potential of growing cash crops which were in high demand in Europe. Settlers began to establish plantations, the majority of which were located in the West Indies. Initially, these plantations were operated with the labor of indentured servants from Europe, but they were eventually supplanted by enslaved Africans brought to the Americas via the Atlantic slave trade. Colonial plantations eventually formed a key component of the triangular trade, whereby European goods were brought to Africa and exchanged for slaves, which were brought to the Americas to be sold to colonists, who used them to produce cash crops which were shipped back to Europe; most African slaves brought to the Americas were sold to the planter class, who frequently subjected them to brutal mistreatment.
