A slavocracy (from slave + -ocracy) is a society primarily ruled by a class of slaveholders, such as those in the southern United States and their confederacy during the American Civil War.
[1] Slavocracies are also sometimes known as plantocracies, after "planter" used as a term for the owners of plantations.
A number of European colonies in the New World were largely slavocracies, usually consisting of a small European settler population relying on a predominantly West African chattel slave population as well as smaller numbers of indentured servants, both European and non-European in origin.
These proslavery societies attempted to resist the abolitionist movement[citation needed] and subsequently relied on freed black and poor white sharecroppers for labor following abolition.
One prominent organization largely representing and collectively funded by a number of British slavocracies was the "West India Interest", which lobbied the British parliament on behalf of planters.