"Burnard's new book is a response to Russell R. Menard's challenge to scholars to historicize three things: the development of large-scale British colonial sugar, rice, and tobacco plantations; the gang labor system of slavery they generally employed; and the dominance of the planter class in the colonies with such systems. That is, rather than assume an almost natural evolution of small farms into ever-larger colonial staple plantations, historians need to investigate when, how, and why large plantations were brought into existence. Burnard, like Menard, brings to this exploration of the causes and consequences of the plantation system a broad background of research in the archival sources of both the colonial Caribbean and southern mainland colonies. The result is a provocative book that is about both more and less than its title suggests. The book provides a survey of the social history of Britain's plantation complex that is as much about culture as economics.".