Mastered by the Clock - Time, Slavery, and Freedom in the American South (Paperback, New edition)

Mastered by the Clock is the first work to explore the evolution of clock-based time consciousness in the American South. Challenging traditional assumptions about the plantation economy's reliance on a premodern, nature-based conception of time, Mark M. Smith shows how and why southerners--particularly masters and their slaves--came to view the clock as a legitimate arbiter of time. Drawing on an extraordinary range of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century archival sources, Smith demonstrates that white southern slaveholders began to incorporate this new sense of time in the 1830s. Influenced by colonial merchants' fascination with time thrift, by a long-held familiarity with urban, public time, by the transport and market revolution in the South, and by their own qualified embrace of modernity, slaveowners began to purchase timepieces in growing numbers, adopting a clock-based conception of time and attempting in turn to instill a similar consciousness in their slaves. But, forbidden to own watches themselves, slaves did not internalize this idea to the same degree as their masters, and slaveholders found themselves dependent as much on the whip as on the clock when enforcing slaves' obedience to time. Ironically, Smith shows, freedom largely consolidated the dependence of masters as well as freedpeople on the clock. |From the Ku Klux Klan to Father Coughlin's Christian Front, the first full-length study to examine, compare, and assess the political influence of right-wing extremist groups during the second quarter of the twentieth century.

General

Imprint:	The University of North Carolina Press
Country of origin:	United States
Release date:	October 1997
First published:	October 1997
Authors:	Mark M. Smith
Dimensions:	235 x 156 x 19mm (L x W x T)
Format:	Paperback
Pages:	328
Edition:	New edition
ISBN-13:	978-0-8078-4693-3
Categories:	Books > Humanities > History > American history > General Books > Humanities > History > History of specific subjects > Social & cultural history Books > Social sciences > Sociology, social studies > Anthropology > General Books > Social sciences > Politics & government > Political control & freedoms > Slavery & emancipation Books > Humanities > History > World history > From 1900 > General Books > History > American history > General Books > History > History of specific subjects > Social & cultural history Books > History > World history > From 1900 > General
LSN:	0-8078-4693-7
Barcode:	9780807846933

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