Plantation complexes, large-scale, self-sufficient estates which produced cash crops for profit, were common on agricultural plantations in the Southern United States from the 17th into the 20th centu
The white-columned plantation house, an "icon" of American architecture, was the "popular embodiment of the plantation way of life" and the centerpiece of the very largest deep southern plantation complexes. Pictured is Destrehan Plantation.
Plantation complexes were reliant on the exploitation of enslaved labor. Pictured is a family of slaves in a cotton field in Georgia, c. 1850.
Advertisement for a plantation complex for sale, 1828, covering 1,370 acres (5.5 km2) in Mississippi state, as well as "ten or more" slaves
1862 photograph of the slave quarter at Smith's Plantation in Port Royal, South Carolina. The slave house shown is of the saddlebag type.