Plantations have been the privileged tool of colonial rule and extraction in Mozambique for more than one hundred years despite never having delivered sustained economic or social benefits. Drawing on extensive archival and qualitative contemporary research, The Plantation Ideal offers new insights into plantation economies, histories, and landscapes. Wendy Wolford tells the story of how the largely failed pursuit of plantation production has shaped agricultural science, government rule, life on the land, and community development in Mozambique from the harshest years of Portuguese colonization to the present.