Country Capitalism: How Corporations from the American South Remade Our Economy and the Planet by Bart Elmore (review)

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• Country Capitalism: How Corporations from the American South Remade Our Economy and the Planet by Bart Elmore
• Steve Striffler

Country Capitalism: How Corporations from the American South Remade Our Economy and the Planet. By Bart Elmore. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2023. Pp. xiv, 233. $28.00, ISBN 978-1-4696-7333-2.)

Country Capitalism: How Corporations from the American South Remade Our Economy and the Planet is an exceptionally readable history centered on the emergence and extraordinary growth of five very large corporations: Coca-Cola, Delta Airlines, Walmart, FedEx, and Bank of America. These companies transformed the world in a multiplicity of ways, including what we eat; how we travel; the way we make, buy, sell, move, and consume pretty much everything; and even how we treat workers and think about work. Author Bart Elmore’s focus is ultimately on exploring how these companies, all born in the South, transformed the economy and forever altered the environment on a global scale. It makes for a fascinating read, one that has the virtue of being very well researched and exceptionally well told.

The book also makes a larger argument about the role of the U.S. South. For Elmore, it is not a coincidence that these corporate behemoths are from the same region. Rather, these companies experienced colossal success precisely because the relatively rural nature of the South led them to adapt in innovative ways. The South, particularly the challenges it posed for companies seeking to extract profit from a region with a relatively dispersed population, was an incubator of corporate innovation. This argument provides a provocative hook that drives the story and will no doubt be debated by scholars, even if at times it feels a bit underdeveloped.

The book is divided into five parts, each corresponding to one of the corporate case studies. The first part explores the rise of Coca-Cola, focusing particularly on its innovative move toward franchising bottling plants, which allowed the company to extend its reach into rural areas and eventually the entire globe. Elmore points our attention to how this expansion transformed global ecosystems as it required more and more of everything—sugar, water, trucks, roads, refrigerators, and so on. He also explores how Coca-Cola attempted to address its ecological impact as environmental concerns arrived on the public radar.

The history of Delta Airlines, originally nicknamed “The Airline of the South,” is particularly interesting. Its success depended heavily on the migration of industry and people from the Midwest to the South during the decades after World War II. The company’s trajectory mirrored shifts in the American economy. Delta’s rise is also important because the airline industry has been a driver of climate change.

Elmore then examines the monster of all southern corporations: Walmart. It is here where the argument about the role of the South in shaping something Elmore calls “country capitalism” is perhaps the strongest (p. 5). Walmart’s initial success was in the rurality that its presence would ultimately threaten. FedEx also learned from its southern experiences while benefiting from and driving “our have-it-now, fly-by-night, buy-on-credit economy” (p. 7). This company’s ecological impact has caught the attention of activists and forced the company to adjust its environmental practices. [End Page 639]

The book concludes with Bank of America, an interesting case study both because Bank of America leaned on a rural strategy for its success and because we tend not to immediately associate banks with pollution. And yet, as investments in oil and gas have become increasingly scrutinized, banks have found themselves in activist crosshairs, forcing them to make adjustments.

Country Capitalism is not a muckraking exposé, and some will no doubt find Elmore’s treatment of these corporations a bit too gentle. But the evenhanded approach largely works as the author shows us how the experience of these corporations in the South led to their success and the massive ecological toll they have had on the planet.

Steve Striffler University of Massachusetts–Boston Copyright © 2024 The Southern Historical Association ...