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Book Cover
E-book
Author Dattel, Eugene R

Title Cotton and race in the making of America : the human costs of economic power / Gene Dattel
Published Chicago : Ivan R. Dee, 2009

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Description 1 online resource (xiv, 416 pages)
Contents Slavery in the making of The Constitution -- The engine of American growth, 1787-1861 -- The north: for whites only, 1800-1865 -- King cotton buys a war -- The racial divide and cotton labor, 1865-1930 -- Cotton without slaves, 1865-1930
Summary "For more than 130 years, from the early nineteenth century until the mid-twentieth, cotton was the leading export crop of the United States. And the connection between cotton and the African-American experience became central to the history of the republic. America's most serious social tragedy, slavery and its legacy, spread only where cotton could be grown. Both before and after the Civil War, and well into the twentieth century, blacks were relegated to work the cotton fields. Their social and economic situation was aggravated by a pervasive racial animosity and fear of a black migratory invasion that caused white Northerners to contain blacks in the South. Gene Dattel's pioneering study explores the historical roots of these central social issues. In telling detail, Mr. Dattel shows why the vastly underappreciated story of cotton is a key to understanding America's rise to economic power. When cotton production exploded to satiate the nineteenth-century textile industry's enormous appetite, it became the first truly complex global business and a driving force in U.S. territorial expansion and sectional economic integration. It propelled New York City to commercial preeminence and fostered independent trade between Europe and the United States, providing export capital for the new nation to gain its financial "sea legs." And without slave-produced cotton, the South could never have initiated the Civil War, America's bloodiest conflict. Cotton continued to exert a powerful influence on both the American economy and race relations in the years after the Civil War. Mr. Dattel's skillful historical analysis identifies the commercial forces that cotton unleashed and the pervasive nature of racial antipathy it produced. This is a story that has never been told in quite the same way before, related here with the authority of a historian with a profound knowledge of international finance."--Publisher's description
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and index
Notes English
Print version record and CIP data provided by publisher; resource not viewed
Subject Slavery -- Economic aspects -- Southern States -- History
Cotton growing -- Economic aspects -- Southern States -- History
Cotton growing -- Social aspects -- Southern States -- History
Plantation life -- Southern States -- History
African Americans -- Southern States -- Social conditions
Slavery -- Political aspects -- United States
BUSINESS & ECONOMICS -- Industries -- Agribusiness.
TECHNOLOGY & ENGINEERING -- Agriculture -- Sustainable Agriculture.
African Americans -- Social conditions
Cotton growing -- Economic aspects
Cotton growing -- Social aspects
Economic history
Plantation life
Politics and government
Race relations
Slavery -- Economic aspects
Slavery -- Political aspects
SUBJECT United States -- Race relations. http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85140494
United States -- Economic conditions. http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85140020
United States -- Politics and government -- 1783-1865. http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85140416
United States -- Politics and government -- 1865-1933. http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85140446
Subject Southern States
United States
Genre/Form History
Form Electronic book
LC no. 2021679554
ISBN 9781442210196
1442210192
1283283751
9781283283755
9786613283757
6613283754