In the aftermath of the Civil War, uncertainty was a pervasive
feature of life in the South, affecting the economic behavior and
social status of former slaves, Freedmen Bureau agents, planters,
merchants, and politicians, among others. Emancipation brought
fundamental questions: How should emancipated slaves be reimbursed
in wage contracts? What occupations and class positions would be
open to blacks and whites? What forms of agricultural tenure could
persist? And what paths to economic growth would be viable? To
understand the escalating uncertainty of the postbellum era, Ruef
draws on a wide range of qualitative and quantitative data,
including several thousand interviews with former slaves, letters,
labor contracts, memoirs, survey responses, Census records, and
credit reports.
At the center of the upheavals brought by emancipation in the
American South was the economic and social transition from slavery
to modern capitalism. In "Between Slavery and Capitalism," Martin
Ruef examines how this institutional change affected individuals,
organizations, and communities in the late nineteenth century, as
blacks and whites alike learned to navigate the shoals between two
different economic worlds. Analyzing trajectories among average
Southerners, this is perhaps the most extensive sociological
treatment of the transition from slavery since W.E.B. DuBois's
"Black Reconstruction in America."
Through a resolutely comparative approach, Between Slavery and
Capitalism identifies profound changes between the economic
institutions of the Old and New South and sheds new light on how
the legacy of emancipation continues to affect political discourse
and race and class relations today.
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