plantocracy

plural plantocracies

1. Government by plantation owners.

   Too many, however, who might take an honourable stand, fear the petty spleen of the plantocracy; preferring the most disgusting adulation, to the blessing of him ready to perish.

   1843, “A Voice from Trinidad”, in Colonial Magazine and Commercial-maritime Journal, page 465

2. The group of plantation owners who have power in such a government.

   Although remnants of the plantocracy retained positions of economic and political importance into the 1960s and represented the hardest core of Jamaican conservatism, its significance was historical rather than contemporary.

   1977, Terry Lacey, Violence and Politics in Jamaica, 1960-70: Internal Security in a Developing Country, The plantocracy and slavery