Myths of the Plantation Society

Myths of the Plantation Society PDF Author: Nathalie Dessens
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780813026824
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 213

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Book Description
"A provocative explanation of how differences in slavery and later abolition movements produced different responses in post-abolition societies and contributed significantly to the creation of the southern myth."--Sylvia Frey, Tulane University Providing new insights into the origins of benevolent myths about the Old South, Nathalie Dessens compares slave systems of the Caribbean and the American South from the early days of European colonization to the abolition of slavery. Her uncommon combination of historical and literary scholarship in a broad comparative framework explains why these two slave societies of the Americas developed so differently. She shows that underneath apparently obvious similarities, evolution of southern society and its West Indian counterpart diverged markedly, notably during debates over the existence of slavery. In both regions, climate and soil conditions favored the development of plantations that relied almost exclusively on the cultivation of such crops as cocoa, coffee, tobacco, cotton, indigo, and sugar and on the importation of other consumer goods. These agricultural economies required extensive manpower, and all colonial societies experienced a constant labor shortage. Both regions readily adopted the system of slavery. Dessens contrasts the institution in the West Indies and the American South, from codification and implementation to abolition and its aftermath. She also describes differences in both regions connected to their geography and varying status as territories. Her examination illuminates the emergence of a cultural distinction of the American South. Both before and after emancipation, southerners found themselves defending their entire civilization, and the myth of benevolent plantation life--complete with paternal masters and contented slaves--was born. Southern fiction writers added their voices to the defense and wrote historical novels that glorified the Golden Age of the South. Dessens asserts that no parallel mythologizing existed in West Indian society, where plantation life was debunked rather than celebrated. In addition to primary sources such as diaries and slave narratives, scholars will be especially fascinated by Dessens' use of travel narratives, a fashionable genre in the 18th and 19th centuries, some written by American colonists visiting other colonies of the Western hemisphere and others written by Europeans visiting the American colonies. Nathalie Dessens is professor of American history and civilization at the University of Toulouse, France.

Myths of the Plantation Society

Myths of the Plantation Society PDF Author: Nathalie Dessens
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780813026824
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 213

Get Book Here

Book Description
"A provocative explanation of how differences in slavery and later abolition movements produced different responses in post-abolition societies and contributed significantly to the creation of the southern myth."--Sylvia Frey, Tulane University Providing new insights into the origins of benevolent myths about the Old South, Nathalie Dessens compares slave systems of the Caribbean and the American South from the early days of European colonization to the abolition of slavery. Her uncommon combination of historical and literary scholarship in a broad comparative framework explains why these two slave societies of the Americas developed so differently. She shows that underneath apparently obvious similarities, evolution of southern society and its West Indian counterpart diverged markedly, notably during debates over the existence of slavery. In both regions, climate and soil conditions favored the development of plantations that relied almost exclusively on the cultivation of such crops as cocoa, coffee, tobacco, cotton, indigo, and sugar and on the importation of other consumer goods. These agricultural economies required extensive manpower, and all colonial societies experienced a constant labor shortage. Both regions readily adopted the system of slavery. Dessens contrasts the institution in the West Indies and the American South, from codification and implementation to abolition and its aftermath. She also describes differences in both regions connected to their geography and varying status as territories. Her examination illuminates the emergence of a cultural distinction of the American South. Both before and after emancipation, southerners found themselves defending their entire civilization, and the myth of benevolent plantation life--complete with paternal masters and contented slaves--was born. Southern fiction writers added their voices to the defense and wrote historical novels that glorified the Golden Age of the South. Dessens asserts that no parallel mythologizing existed in West Indian society, where plantation life was debunked rather than celebrated. In addition to primary sources such as diaries and slave narratives, scholars will be especially fascinated by Dessens' use of travel narratives, a fashionable genre in the 18th and 19th centuries, some written by American colonists visiting other colonies of the Western hemisphere and others written by Europeans visiting the American colonies. Nathalie Dessens is professor of American history and civilization at the University of Toulouse, France.

The Plantation Mistress

The Plantation Mistress PDF Author: Catherine Clinton
Publisher: Pantheon
ISBN: 0394722531
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 353

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Book Description
This pioneering study of the much-mythologized Southern belle offers the first serious look at the lives of white women and their harsh and restricted place in the slave society before the Civil War. Drawing on the diaries, letters, and memoirs of hundreds of planter wives and daughters, Clinton sets before us in vivid detail the daily life of the plantation mistress and her ambiguous intermediary position in the hierarchy between slave and master. "The Plantation Mistress challenges and reinterprets a host of issues related to the Old South. The result is a book that forces us to rethink some of our basic assumptions about two peculiar institutions -- the slave plantation and the nineteenth-century family. It approaches a familiar subject from a new angle, and as a result, permanently alters our understanding of the Old South and women's place in it.

Tomlinson Hill

Tomlinson Hill PDF Author: Chris Tomlinson
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 1466850507
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 430

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Book Description
A New York Times Best Seller! Tomlinson Hill is the stunning story of two families—one white, one black—who trace their roots to a slave plantation that bears their name. Internationally recognized for his work as a fearless war correspondent, award-winning journalist Chris Tomlinson grew up hearing stories about his family's abandoned cotton plantation in Falls County, Texas. Most of the tales lionized his white ancestors for pioneering along the Brazos River. His grandfather often said the family's slaves loved them so much that they also took Tomlinson as their last name. LaDainian Tomlinson, football great and former running back for the San Diego Chargers, spent part of his childhood playing on the same land that his black ancestors had worked as slaves. As a child, LaDainian believed the Hill was named after his family. Not until he was old enough to read an historical plaque did he realize that the Hill was named for his ancestor's slaveholders. A masterpiece of authentic American history, Tomlinson Hill traces the true and very revealing story of these two families. From the beginning in 1854— when the first Tomlinson, a white woman, arrived—to 2007, when the last Tomlinson, LaDainian's father, left, the book unflinchingly explores the history of race and bigotry in Texas. Along the way it also manages to disclose a great many untruths that are latent in the unsettling and complex story of America. Tomlinson Hill is also the basis for a film and an interactive web project. The award-winning film, which airs on PBS, concentrates on present-day Marlin, Texas and how the community struggles with poverty and the legacy of race today, and is accompanied by an interactive web site called Voice of Marlin, which stores the oral histories collected along the way. Chris Tomlinson has used the reporting skills he honed as a highly respected reporter covering ethnic violence in Africa and the Middle East to fashion a perfect microcosm of America's own ethnic strife. The economic inequality, political shenanigans, cruelty and racism—both subtle and overt—that informs the history of Tomlinson Hill also live on in many ways to this very day in our country as a whole. The author has used his impressive credentials and honest humanity to create a classic work of American history that will take its place alongside the timeless work of our finest historians

Slave Women in Caribbean Society, 1650-1838

Slave Women in Caribbean Society, 1650-1838 PDF Author: Barbara Bush
Publisher: James Currey
ISBN: 9780852550588
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 212

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Book Description
In this text the author sets forth and then evaulates the images of slave women accumulated in published sources and folklore.

Creating an Old South

Creating an Old South PDF Author: Edward E. Baptist
Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press
ISBN: 0807860034
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 412

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Book Description
Set on the antebellum southern frontier, this book uses the history of two counties in Florida's panhandle to tell the story of the migrations, disruptions, and settlements that made the plantation South. Soon after the United States acquired Florida from Spain in 1821, migrants from older southern states began settling the land that became Jackson and Leon Counties. Slaves, torn from family and community, were forced to carve plantations from the woods of Middle Florida, while planters and less wealthy white men battled over the social, political, and economic institutions of their new society. Conflict between white men became full-scale crisis in the 1840s, but when sectional conflict seemed to threaten slavery, the whites of Middle Florida found common ground. In politics and everyday encounters, they enshrined the ideal of white male equality--and black inequality. To mask their painful memories of crisis, the planter elite told themselves that their society had been transplanted from older states without conflict. But this myth of an "Old," changeless South only papered over the struggles that transformed slave society in the course of its expansion. In fact, that myth continues to shroud from our view the plantation frontier, the very engine of conflict that had led to the myth's creation.

Fast-wood Forestry: Myths and Realities

Fast-wood Forestry: Myths and Realities PDF Author: Christian Cossalter
Publisher: CIFOR
ISBN: 9793361638
Category :
Languages : ja
Pages : 66

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Book Description
A brief history of plantations. Environmental issues. Plantations and biodiversity. Water matters. Plantations and the soil. Pests: plantations' achilles' heel? Genetically modified trees: opportunity or treath? Plantations and global warming. Social issues. Employement: a contested balance sheet. Land tenure and conflict. Economic issues. Spiralling demand. Incentives and subsidies. Economies of scale. Costing the earth.

Nights with Uncle Remus

Nights with Uncle Remus PDF Author: Joel Chandler Harris
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : African American men
Languages : en
Pages : 494

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Book Description
Drafts, autograph manuscript, corrected, of the introduction and chapters 37 and 39 through 71.

Sugar in the Blood

Sugar in the Blood PDF Author: Andrea Stuart
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 030796115X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 394

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Book Description
In the late 1630s, lured by the promise of the New World, Andrea Stuart’s earliest known maternal ancestor, George Ashby, set sail from England to settle in Barbados. He fell into the life of a sugar plantation owner by mere chance, but by the time he harvested his first crop, a revolution was fully under way: the farming of sugar cane, and the swiftly increasing demands for sugar worldwide, would not only lift George Ashby from abject poverty and shape the lives of his descendants, but it would also bind together ambitious white entrepreneurs and enslaved black workers in a strangling embrace. Stuart uses her own family story—from the seventeenth century through the present—as the pivot for this epic tale of migration, settlement, survival, slavery and the making of the Americas. As it grew, the sugar trade enriched Europe as never before, financing the Industrial Revolution and fuelling the Enlightenment. And, as well, it became the basis of many economies in South America, played an important part in the evolution of the United States as a world power and transformed the Caribbean into an archipelago of riches. But this sweet and hugely profitable trade—“white gold,” as it was known—had profoundly less palatable consequences in its precipitation of the enslavement of Africans to work the fields on the islands and, ultimately, throughout the American continents. Interspersing the tectonic shifts of colonial history with her family’s experience, Stuart explores the interconnected themes of settlement, sugar and slavery with extraordinary subtlety and sensitivity. In examining how these forces shaped her own family—its genealogy, intimate relationships, circumstances of birth, varying hues of skin—she illuminates how her family, among millions of others like it, in turn transformed the society in which they lived, and how that interchange continues to this day. Shifting between personal and global history, Stuart gives us a deepened understanding of the connections between continents, between black and white, between men and women, between the free and the enslaved. It is a story brought to life with riveting and unparalleled immediacy, a story of fundamental importance to the making of our world.

Capitalism and Slavery

Capitalism and Slavery PDF Author: Eric Williams
Publisher: UNC Press Books
ISBN: 1469619490
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 308

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Book Description
Slavery helped finance the Industrial Revolution in England. Plantation owners, shipbuilders, and merchants connected with the slave trade accumulated vast fortunes that established banks and heavy industry in Europe and expanded the reach of capitalism worldwide. Eric Williams advanced these powerful ideas in Capitalism and Slavery, published in 1944. Years ahead of its time, his profound critique became the foundation for studies of imperialism and economic development. Binding an economic view of history with strong moral argument, Williams's study of the role of slavery in financing the Industrial Revolution refuted traditional ideas of economic and moral progress and firmly established the centrality of the African slave trade in European economic development. He also showed that mature industrial capitalism in turn helped destroy the slave system. Establishing the exploitation of commercial capitalism and its link to racial attitudes, Williams employed a historicist vision that set the tone for future studies. In a new introduction, Colin Palmer assesses the lasting impact of Williams's groundbreaking work and analyzes the heated scholarly debates it generated when it first appeared.

Myth and Southern History: The Old South

Myth and Southern History: The Old South PDF Author: Patrick Gerster
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
ISBN: 9780252060243
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 228

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Book Description
Many historical myths are actually false yet psychologically true. The contributors to this volume see myth and reality as complementary elements in the historical record. Myth and Southern History is as much a commentary on southern historiography as it is on the viability of myth in the historical process. Volume 2: The New South offers new perspectives on the North's role in southern mythology, the so-called Savage South, twentieth-century black and white southern women, and the "changes" that distinguish the late twentieth-century South from that of the Civil War era.