After the 1854 abolition of slavery in Peru, a new generation of plantation owners turned to a system of peasant tenantry to maintain cotton production through the use of cheap labour. In this book Vincent C. Peloso analyzes the changing social and economic relationships governing the production of cotton in the Pisco Valley, little-studied area of Peru’s south coast. Challenging widely held assumptions about the system of relations that tied peasants to the land, Peloso’s work examines the interdependence of the planters, managers, and peasants - and the various strategies used by peasants in their struggle to resist control by the owners. Grounded in the theoretical perspectives of subaltern studies and drawing on an extremely complete archive of landed estates that includes detailed regular reports by plantation manages on all aspects of farming life, this book reveals the intricate ways peasants, managers, and owner manipulated each other to benefit their own interest. As Peloso demonstrates, rather than a simple case of domination of the peasants by the owners, both parties realized that negotiations was the key to successful growth, often with the result that peasants co-operated with plantation growth strategies in order to participate in a market economy. Long-term contracts gave tenants and sharecroppers many opportunities to make farming choices, to assert claims on the land, compete among themselves, and participate in plantation expansion. at the same time, owners strove to keep the peasants in debt and well aware of who maintained ultimate control. Peasants on Plantations offers a largely untold view of the monumental struggle between planters and peasants that was fundamental in shaping the agrarian history of Peru. It will interest those engaged in Latin American studies, anthropology, and peasant and agrarian studies.