Global Perspectives On Industrial Transformation In The American South

by Delfino, Susanna; Gillespie, Michele

• ISBN13: 9780826215833
• ISBN10: 0826215831
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2005-07-30
• Publisher: Univ of Missouri Pr

Summary

Covering the late colonial age to World War I and beyond, this collection of essays places the economic history of the American South in an international light by establishing useful comparisons with the larger Atlantic and world economy. In an attempt to dispel long-lasting myths about the South, the essays analyze the economic evolution of the South since the slave era. From this perspective, the conception of a backward, wholly agricultural antebellum South occupied only by wealthy planters, poor whites, and contented slaves has finally given way to one of economic and social dynamism as well as regional prosperity. In a coherent and cohesive progression of subjects, these essays show that the South had been deeply enmeshed in the Atlantic economy since the colonial period and, after the Civil War, retained distinctive needs that caused increasing departure from the course northerners adopted on matters of political economy. This comparative approach also helps explain the motivations behind the political choices made by the South as an eminently export-oriented region. This book shows that the South was not slower to develop with respect to industrialization than either the majority of the northern states, especially in the West, or the countries of Western Europe. In fact, the apparently disappointing performance of the New Southrs"s economy appears to be the result of more pervasive and largely uncontrollable trends that affected the national as well as the international economy.Global Perspectives on Industrial Transformation in the American Southmakes an important contribution to the economic history of the South and to recent efforts to place American history in a more international context.

Table of Contents

Preface	ix
Introduction
Susanna Delfino and Michele Gillespie	1	(13)
Southern Industrialization
Myths and Realities
Stanley L. Engerman	14	(12)
Charleston and the British Industrial Revolution, 1750-1790
Emma Hart	26	(24)
Alternatives to Dependence
The Lower South's Antebellum Pursuit of Sectional Development through Global Interdependence
Brian Schoen	50	(26)
Industrialization and Economic Development in the Nineteenth-Century U.S. South
Some Interregional and Intercontinental Comparative Perspectives
Shearer Davis Bowman	76	(29)
The Idea of Southern Economic Backwardness
A Comparative View of the United States and Italy
Susanna Delfino	105	(26)
Markets and Manufacturing
Industry and Agriculture in the Antebellum South and Midwest
John Majewski and Viken Tchakerian	131	(20)
Southern Textiles in Global Context
David L. Carlton and Peter Coclanis	151	(24)
Beginnings of the Global Economy
Capital Mobility and the 1890's U.S. Textile Industry
Beth English	175	(24)
Black Workers, White Immigrants, and the Postemancipation Problem of Labor
The New South in Transnational Perspective
Erin Elizabeth Clune	199	(30)
Contributors	229	(4)
Index	233