“Between the Mansion and the Quarters”

“Between the Mansion and the Quarters”: How Agriculture and Landscape Defined Colonial America in the South explores how the physical environment and agricultural economy shaped the social, economic, and cultural structures of the colonial South. Focusing on the spatial relationship between the plantation “mansion” (or manor house) and the enslaved people’s quarters, the lecture examines how land use, cash crops like tobacco and rice, and geographic conditions such as fertile river valleys influenced settlement patterns and labor systems.