"This is a pathbreaking book, well grounded in the appropriate
documentary record. Downey makes especially good use of the reports
of the South Carolina Canal and Rail Road Company and of other
corporations, which are so tedious to read, to offer an exciting
and fresh perspective on an old problem of vital importance, the
relationship between businessmen and planters in the Old South" --
American Historical Review
"Downey's book has many merits. First of all, it successfully
presents a comprehensive and harmonious picture of the development
of the region. Second, it helps to better define the contours of
the long misunderstood southern political economy and its
transformations during the latter part of the antebellum era. It is
indeed a well-written and well-thought piece of historiography
showing in microcosm how a new synthesis of antebellum southern
history should be conceived." -- Enterprise and SocietyIn Planting
a Capitalist South, Tom Downey effectively challenges the idea that
commercial and industrial interests did little to alter the
planter-dominated political economy of the Old South. By analyzing
the interplay of planters, merchants, and manufacturers, Downey
characterizes the South as a sphere of contending types of
capitalists: agrarians with land and slaves versus commercial and
industrial owners of banks, railroads, stores, and factories. His
book focuses on the central Savannah River Valley of western South
Carolina, an influential political and economic region and the home
of some of the South's leading states' rights and proslavery
ideologues; which also spawned a number of inland commercial towns,
one of the nation's first railroads, and a robust wage-labor
community. As such, western South Carolina provides a unique
opportunity for looking at contrasting economic forces but solely
within the boundaries of the South -- slavery vs. free labor,
industrial vs. agricultural, urban vs. rural. A revisionary study,
Planting a Capitalist South offers clear evidence of a burgeoning
transition to capitalist society in the Old South. "Downey's book
is a welcome new addition to the growing corpus of studies seeking
to understand the lives of white merchants and manufacturers. Well
written and researched, Downey's excellent work will add greater
nuance to our picture of the social and economic life of the Old
South, particularly our picture of the emerging southern middle
class." -- Georgia Historical Quarterly"Planting a Capitalist South
makes several important contributions. The idea that commerce and
industry challenged tenets of republican ideology may be a familiar
one, but Downey pursues it in directions seldom explored by
previous historians of the Old South, examining conflicts over
issue like railroad routes, water rights, and the power of town
governments. Moreover, he links those subjects to historians'
debates about the capitalist character of the region, and he stakes
out an innovative position with his argument that the late
antebellum South was in the midst of a transition to capitalism."
-- Business History Review
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