Historically, plantations can be traced back to the Portuguese Canary Islands in the 15th century. Only later, in the 16th and 17th centuries, were they set up in the New World [Wolf 1982]. Here they produced mainly sugar and cotton for the European market and were based on the use of African slave labour. Subsequently and despite the abolition of slavery in the early 19th century, they spread under the aegis of an expanding western imperialism into parts of Africa, Asia and Oceania. A wider range of food, beverages and other industrial staples were cultivated for the consumer markets and factories of the West. To this day, plantations remain an important form of agricultural production in many parts of the world. However, fundamental changes in global economics and politics within the last few decades have substantially redefined the relationship between developed and less developed countries on the one hand and between capital and labour on the other. This has profound implications for the future development of plantations.