The “Perfect Map” of Widow Hiamtse: A Micro-Spatial History of Sugar Plantations in Early Modern Southeast Asia, 1685–1710

Not all early modern sugar plantations were in the Atlantic World. Indeed, far away from it, in the rural space surrounding the Dutch headquarters in Asia (the Ommelanden of Batavia (Jakarta)), over a hundred of them were thriving by the end of the seventeenth century. Together, they constituted a unique plantation society that followed Dutch land law, was operated by Javanese rural labour, and was managed by Chinese sugar entrepreneurs. Through archival work on a certain “perfect map” that belonged to a Chinese widow, this article explores how that plantation society took shape on the ground.

“Known To Be Equal to the Management”

Enslaved overseers have largely been neglected in the extant historiography of plantation slavery. At best they have been pushed to the margins of the literature, their numbers and their significance downplayed. Yet, as large plantations diversified over the latter years of the eighteenth century, and as relations between established planters and independently minded and aspirational white overseers became prone to mistrust and friction, many prominent modernizing planters, including both Washington and Jefferson, began to experiment with unfree managers. They often proved to be skilled, dependable and, even under the pressure of the Revolutionary War, resilient. Yet their presence raised serious questions within plantation society too; they challenged white racial hegemony, and their ‘loyalty’ was a conditional and contingent quality. They occupy a unique place in the story of plantation management, one that challenges orthodox conceptions of race and power in the slave South.

The History of French in Louisiana

This chapter introduces the reader to Louisiana French. Four varieties of French are generally recognized by linguists: Colonial French, Plantation Society French, Louisiana Creole, and Louisiana Regional French (most commonly called Cajun French). The French of the Lafourche Basin is classified as Louisiana Regional French. The chapter outlines the similarities and differences between the three, and then focuses in particular on Louisiana Regional French, providing a historical outline of its development and a brief description of its features in comparison to Standard French. The chapter concludes with a brief discussion of the variation found in Louisiana French across the state. This sets the scene for the detailed description of the language as it is spoken in the Lafourche country, the language at the center of place-based identity in Terrebonne-Lafourche.