Introduction

The plantation and the large-scale ranch were the basic units of agricultural production in the province, and slaves provided the foundation of the labour supply which worked them. That said, it must be pointed out that these truisms reach the limits of their usefulness almost as soon as they are stated. The different patterns of land tenure, the alternative sources of the labour supply and the different production requirements of the individual crops led to an extremely varied and complex agricultural structure.

What was an hacienda in late-colonial Caracas? ‘Hacienda’ or plantation conjure up images of acceptably large land-holdings worked by at least a number of slaves growing some cash crop or other. According to the unspecified qualifications used for the survey of the province between 1785 and 1787, there were 1,751 land-plots large enough to be denominated cash-crop haciendas, growing cacao, sugar-cane and indigo. A number of these haciendas no doubt handsomely conformed to the prototype. The majority of land-holdings listed as haciendas, however, departed to a lesser or greater degree from the ideal.

Two of the characteristics most assocated with haciendas are personal ownership and sizeable land-plots. It might reasonably be assumed that hacendados owned the land their haciendas were founded on. This was not necessarily the case. There are numerous instances of haciendas being leased, or founded and worked on rented lands. In the case of sugar-cane haciendas, as we shall see, there are prominent examples of rentals whereby large and productive units were placed in the hands of enterprising, rich merchants for nine years at a time.