In 1941, three Fisk University scholars—musician John Wesley Work, sociologist Lewis Jones, and sociology student Samuel Adams—documented the listening habits of Black residents of Coahuma County, Mississippi, and the jukebox offerings in the Black-patronized establishments of Coahuma’s county seat, Clarksdale, while their Library of Congress colleague Alan Lomax recorded local blues and folk musicians. Lomax was in search of Robert Johnson, who had died three years earlier, so instead recorded songs by Muddy Waters, Son House, and other Delta blues musicians that remain lodestars of the genre. Work, Jones, and Adams, however, discovered that many Black Delta people did not listen to much blues. At the King and Anderson Plantation, near Clarksdale, Black farmworkers and sharecroppers liked some blues songs (though primarily of the crooning type that would influence 1940s jazz) but listened mostly to popular songs, swing numbers, hymns, and gospel, admiring Cab Calloway and the sometimesbluesy Count Basie but also Benny Goodman, Artie Shaw, and Roy Acuff. On the jukebox at Messenger’s Café in Clarksdale, the top six numbers were by bandleaders Count Basie, Louis Jordan, Johnny Hodges, Eddy Duchin, and Sammy Kaye. Even in the cradle of the blues, scant miles from Robert Johnson’s Crossroads, in the town where Bessie Smith died, Black Mississippians were mostly listening to other things. Even in 1941.1 This disparity between apparent and actual Black Southern taste endures: now, Clarksdale is a center for blues tourism, attracting more than 100,000 visitors—almost all white—to the blues clubs downtown, while Black people repeatedly told sociologist B. Brian Foster that they mostly liked other music: soul (Luther Vandross, Marvin Gaye, Patti LaBelle) and gospel, among older people, and hip-hop (Nicki Minaj, Moneybagg Yo, 2 Chainz), among the younger. Even when asked to name blues music they like, they refer to people who might be classed as blues but might also be called southern soul: Johnnie Taylor, Marvin Sease, Jackie Neal, Tyrone Davis.
{"title":"Reinventing the Blues","authors":"G. Downs","doi":"10.1353/rah.2022.0044","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/rah.2022.0044","url":null,"abstract":"In 1941, three Fisk University scholars—musician John Wesley Work, sociologist Lewis Jones, and sociology student Samuel Adams—documented the listening habits of Black residents of Coahuma County, Mississippi, and the jukebox offerings in the Black-patronized establishments of Coahuma’s county seat, Clarksdale, while their Library of Congress colleague Alan Lomax recorded local blues and folk musicians. Lomax was in search of Robert Johnson, who had died three years earlier, so instead recorded songs by Muddy Waters, Son House, and other Delta blues musicians that remain lodestars of the genre. Work, Jones, and Adams, however, discovered that many Black Delta people did not listen to much blues. At the King and Anderson Plantation, near Clarksdale, Black farmworkers and sharecroppers liked some blues songs (though primarily of the crooning type that would influence 1940s jazz) but listened mostly to popular songs, swing numbers, hymns, and gospel, admiring Cab Calloway and the sometimesbluesy Count Basie but also Benny Goodman, Artie Shaw, and Roy Acuff. On the jukebox at Messenger’s Café in Clarksdale, the top six numbers were by bandleaders Count Basie, Louis Jordan, Johnny Hodges, Eddy Duchin, and Sammy Kaye. Even in the cradle of the blues, scant miles from Robert Johnson’s Crossroads, in the town where Bessie Smith died, Black Mississippians were mostly listening to other things. Even in 1941.1 This disparity between apparent and actual Black Southern taste endures: now, Clarksdale is a center for blues tourism, attracting more than 100,000 visitors—almost all white—to the blues clubs downtown, while Black people repeatedly told sociologist B. Brian Foster that they mostly liked other music: soul (Luther Vandross, Marvin Gaye, Patti LaBelle) and gospel, among older people, and hip-hop (Nicki Minaj, Moneybagg Yo, 2 Chainz), among the younger. Even when asked to name blues music they like, they refer to people who might be classed as blues but might also be called southern soul: Johnnie Taylor, Marvin Sease, Jackie Neal, Tyrone Davis.","PeriodicalId":43597,"journal":{"name":"REVIEWS IN AMERICAN HISTORY","volume":"50 1","pages":"422 - 427"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2022-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45289840","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Science matters. In his impressive Science under Fire: Challenges to Scientific Authority in Modern America, Andrew Jewett skillfully explores a variety of different critiques of science across twentieth-century United States history. These critiques do not always align in their particulars: some are based in religion, while others are secular. Some come from the political right, others from the left. Some seem to originate from the cultural margins, whereas others were mainstream. Moreover, as Jewett acknowledges, there is no consistent definition of science that runs through all the critiques. What unites them is a sense that there is something amiss in the world—modernity, secularism, amorality, dehumanization, totalitarianism, materialism, technocracy—and that science is to blame. Science matters, for these critics, and in all the wrong ways. Science under Fire can be profitably read as a comprehensive treatment of science skepticism in modern U.S. history. Jewett effectively distills the essences of a staggeringly wide range of thinkers and writers across many decades. “Although a concern with science’s corrupting cultural effects has never been the dominant strain in American thinking about science,” he writes, “it has been persistent, influential, and consequential for nearly a century—above all, in the post-World War II ‘golden age’” (p. 16). Having accelerated after 1945, such skepticism has become entrenched in recent decades and one of its most prominent manifestations—climate change denial—is proving to have planetary implications. However, Jewett, counterintuitively but powerfully, scarcely mentions climate change. While some readers might wish for a greater engagement with our contemporary crisis, I welcomed Jewett’s more historical focus. After all, we have any number of thoughtful analyses concerning the origin and nature of climate change denial.1 What we don’t have is exactly what Science under Fire provides: a synthesis of science skepticism before the current era. Like all good history, this book demonstrates that its subject is far more complicated than we might assume simply by considering its most recent form.
{"title":"Concerning Science","authors":"David K. Hecht","doi":"10.1353/rah.2022.0040","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/rah.2022.0040","url":null,"abstract":"Science matters. In his impressive Science under Fire: Challenges to Scientific Authority in Modern America, Andrew Jewett skillfully explores a variety of different critiques of science across twentieth-century United States history. These critiques do not always align in their particulars: some are based in religion, while others are secular. Some come from the political right, others from the left. Some seem to originate from the cultural margins, whereas others were mainstream. Moreover, as Jewett acknowledges, there is no consistent definition of science that runs through all the critiques. What unites them is a sense that there is something amiss in the world—modernity, secularism, amorality, dehumanization, totalitarianism, materialism, technocracy—and that science is to blame. Science matters, for these critics, and in all the wrong ways. Science under Fire can be profitably read as a comprehensive treatment of science skepticism in modern U.S. history. Jewett effectively distills the essences of a staggeringly wide range of thinkers and writers across many decades. “Although a concern with science’s corrupting cultural effects has never been the dominant strain in American thinking about science,” he writes, “it has been persistent, influential, and consequential for nearly a century—above all, in the post-World War II ‘golden age’” (p. 16). Having accelerated after 1945, such skepticism has become entrenched in recent decades and one of its most prominent manifestations—climate change denial—is proving to have planetary implications. However, Jewett, counterintuitively but powerfully, scarcely mentions climate change. While some readers might wish for a greater engagement with our contemporary crisis, I welcomed Jewett’s more historical focus. After all, we have any number of thoughtful analyses concerning the origin and nature of climate change denial.1 What we don’t have is exactly what Science under Fire provides: a synthesis of science skepticism before the current era. Like all good history, this book demonstrates that its subject is far more complicated than we might assume simply by considering its most recent form.","PeriodicalId":43597,"journal":{"name":"REVIEWS IN AMERICAN HISTORY","volume":"50 1","pages":"389 - 395"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2022-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41320397","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Ow! Bam! Good Grief!: Comics and Politics","authors":"Lori Clune","doi":"10.1353/rah.2022.0043","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/rah.2022.0043","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":43597,"journal":{"name":"REVIEWS IN AMERICAN HISTORY","volume":"50 1","pages":"416 - 421"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2022-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46789425","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Nativist Nation","authors":"Lucy E. Salyer","doi":"10.1353/rah.2022.0049","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/rah.2022.0049","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":43597,"journal":{"name":"REVIEWS IN AMERICAN HISTORY","volume":"50 1","pages":"368 - 381"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2022-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49658855","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In this finely crafted, deeply researched, and highly original work, Samantha Seeley makes an important addition to a growing body of scholarship that is revealing essential connections between Indigenous and Black history in the early republic. Much of this work has focused on relations between Indigenous and Black people, especially in the South, where Native nations enslaved and incorporated Black people and where Blacks enslaved to whites crossed paths with Natives.1 Other work has examined evolving ideas and policies concerning the place of Indigenous and Black people in an aggressively expansionist United States.2 Seeley makes a significant contribution to the second area of inquiry, while also providing rich accounts of how Indigenous and Black people contested efforts to remove them beyond the boundaries of national belonging by pursuing what she terms “the right to remain.” When historians think of removal in the early republic what usually comes to mind is the expulsion of Native nations following the 1830 Indian Removal Act. Seeley takes a considerably broader perspective, observing that “removal was a capacious term,” applying, for example, to poor laws which required “self deportation” and the “forced relocation” of people prosecuted under the Alien and Sedition Acts. Most often, however, “state and federal officials . . . directed removal toward free African Americans and Native Americans,” using it to “draw the limits of belonging based on race” (p. 7). Seeley also proposes that removal has a deep history. Rather than seeing Indian removal as emerging in the mid to late 1820s, a commonplace in the scholarship, Seeley contends that it “moved as rapidly and with such devastation in the 1830s because its foundation had been prepared over the preceding decades” (p. 23). Similarly, although the American Colonization Society (ACS), which proposed to colonize (remove) free and emancipated Blacks to Liberia, was organized in 1816, this project “distilled a variety of ideas” that had circulated since the
{"title":"Who Must Go?: Drawing the Borders of White Supremacy in the Early Republic","authors":"Jeffrey Ostler","doi":"10.1353/rah.2022.0039","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/rah.2022.0039","url":null,"abstract":"In this finely crafted, deeply researched, and highly original work, Samantha Seeley makes an important addition to a growing body of scholarship that is revealing essential connections between Indigenous and Black history in the early republic. Much of this work has focused on relations between Indigenous and Black people, especially in the South, where Native nations enslaved and incorporated Black people and where Blacks enslaved to whites crossed paths with Natives.1 Other work has examined evolving ideas and policies concerning the place of Indigenous and Black people in an aggressively expansionist United States.2 Seeley makes a significant contribution to the second area of inquiry, while also providing rich accounts of how Indigenous and Black people contested efforts to remove them beyond the boundaries of national belonging by pursuing what she terms “the right to remain.” When historians think of removal in the early republic what usually comes to mind is the expulsion of Native nations following the 1830 Indian Removal Act. Seeley takes a considerably broader perspective, observing that “removal was a capacious term,” applying, for example, to poor laws which required “self deportation” and the “forced relocation” of people prosecuted under the Alien and Sedition Acts. Most often, however, “state and federal officials . . . directed removal toward free African Americans and Native Americans,” using it to “draw the limits of belonging based on race” (p. 7). Seeley also proposes that removal has a deep history. Rather than seeing Indian removal as emerging in the mid to late 1820s, a commonplace in the scholarship, Seeley contends that it “moved as rapidly and with such devastation in the 1830s because its foundation had been prepared over the preceding decades” (p. 23). Similarly, although the American Colonization Society (ACS), which proposed to colonize (remove) free and emancipated Blacks to Liberia, was organized in 1816, this project “distilled a variety of ideas” that had circulated since the","PeriodicalId":43597,"journal":{"name":"REVIEWS IN AMERICAN HISTORY","volume":"50 1","pages":"382 - 388"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2022-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43757197","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Author-Title-Reviewer Index for Volume 50 (2022)","authors":"","doi":"10.1353/rah.2002.0074","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/rah.2002.0074","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":43597,"journal":{"name":"REVIEWS IN AMERICAN HISTORY","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2022-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1353/rah.2002.0074","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41811196","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Americans often date the emergence of a strong commitment to government support of science to the launch of the Soviet Union’s Sputnik 1 satellite in October 1957. That event certainly spurred policy decisions that increased federal investments in education and science, and thus is an appropriate starting point for the popular narrative about science. At the same time, policy developments of the Sputnik era built on earlier events, widely recognized by historians of science. That perspective starts the story with the presentation in July 1946 of Vannever Bush’s report, Science, The Endless Frontier, to President Truman, advocating for a large, organized federal investment in scientific research, based on the role of science and technology in the Second World War. Early efforts to enact legislation based on the Bush report failed (Truman vetoed the first bill that passed because it lacked presidential control over the appointment of the Foundation’s leadership), but in 1950 Truman signed the National Science Foundation Act, establishing an enduring basis for publicly—especially federally—funded scientific research in the United States. The debates about the creation of the National Science Foundation pitted progressives against conservatives and advocates of public and congressional control of science against advocates of exclusive control by scientists.1 One of the topics of debate—although hardly the loudest—was whether the social sciences would be included in the Foundation’s charge.2 Vannever Bush was opposed to their inclusion, sometimes arguing that they should be supported by a separate organization; on the other side, Democratic West Virginia Senator Harley M. Kilgore, a leading sponsor of a more progressive approach, supported their inclusion in the Foundation’s mission. In the end, the compromise legislation that Truman signed in 1950 did not include support for the social sciences, but at the same time did not prohibit such support. The Foundation did not totally exclude the social sciences for long; it hired sociologist Harry Alpert in 1953, and in 1954 introduced a first, extremely modest, program to support the linkage between the social and natural sciences.
美国人常常把政府大力支持科学的出现追溯到1957年10月苏联发射“斯普特尼克1号”卫星。这一事件无疑刺激了政策决定，增加了联邦对教育和科学的投资，因此，这是一个关于科学的流行叙事的适当起点。与此同时，史泼尼克时代的政策发展建立在早期事件的基础上，这一点得到了科学史学家的广泛认可。这一观点始于1946年7月范诺·布什向杜鲁门总统提交的报告《科学，无尽的边疆》，该报告主张基于科学技术在第二次世界大战中的作用，对科学研究进行大规模、有组织的联邦投资。根据布什报告制定立法的早期努力失败了(杜鲁门否决了第一个通过的法案，因为该法案缺乏总统对基金会领导人任命的控制权)，但1950年杜鲁门签署了《国家科学基金会法案》，为美国的公共——尤其是联邦政府资助的科学研究建立了持久的基础。关于建立国家科学基金会的辩论使进步人士与保守人士对立起来，使主张由公众和国会控制科学的人与主张由科学家独家控制科学的人对立起来其中一个争论的话题——虽然不是最激烈的——是社会科学是否应该包括在基金会的费用中范诺·布什反对他们的加入，有时认为他们应该由一个单独的组织来支持;另一方面，西弗吉尼亚州民主党参议员哈利·m·基尔戈(Harley M. Kilgore)支持将他们纳入基金会的使命，他是更进步方法的主要发起人。最后，杜鲁门在1950年签署的妥协法案没有包括对社会科学的支持，但同时也没有禁止这种支持。基金会并没有长期完全排斥社会科学;1953年，它聘请了社会学家哈里·阿尔珀特(Harry Alpert)，并于1954年推出了第一个极其温和的项目，以支持社会科学与自然科学之间的联系。
{"title":"Social Science and Its Frontiers","authors":"M. Gutmann","doi":"10.1353/rah.2022.0041","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/rah.2022.0041","url":null,"abstract":"Americans often date the emergence of a strong commitment to government support of science to the launch of the Soviet Union’s Sputnik 1 satellite in October 1957. That event certainly spurred policy decisions that increased federal investments in education and science, and thus is an appropriate starting point for the popular narrative about science. At the same time, policy developments of the Sputnik era built on earlier events, widely recognized by historians of science. That perspective starts the story with the presentation in July 1946 of Vannever Bush’s report, Science, The Endless Frontier, to President Truman, advocating for a large, organized federal investment in scientific research, based on the role of science and technology in the Second World War. Early efforts to enact legislation based on the Bush report failed (Truman vetoed the first bill that passed because it lacked presidential control over the appointment of the Foundation’s leadership), but in 1950 Truman signed the National Science Foundation Act, establishing an enduring basis for publicly—especially federally—funded scientific research in the United States. The debates about the creation of the National Science Foundation pitted progressives against conservatives and advocates of public and congressional control of science against advocates of exclusive control by scientists.1 One of the topics of debate—although hardly the loudest—was whether the social sciences would be included in the Foundation’s charge.2 Vannever Bush was opposed to their inclusion, sometimes arguing that they should be supported by a separate organization; on the other side, Democratic West Virginia Senator Harley M. Kilgore, a leading sponsor of a more progressive approach, supported their inclusion in the Foundation’s mission. In the end, the compromise legislation that Truman signed in 1950 did not include support for the social sciences, but at the same time did not prohibit such support. The Foundation did not totally exclude the social sciences for long; it hired sociologist Harry Alpert in 1953, and in 1954 introduced a first, extremely modest, program to support the linkage between the social and natural sciences.","PeriodicalId":43597,"journal":{"name":"REVIEWS IN AMERICAN HISTORY","volume":"50 1","pages":"396 - 407"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2022-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46368600","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Black Hole","authors":"R. Bell","doi":"10.1353/rah.2022.0048","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/rah.2022.0048","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":43597,"journal":{"name":"REVIEWS IN AMERICAN HISTORY","volume":"50 1","pages":"361 - 367"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2022-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49317143","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Rage, Rage, Against the Dying of the Light","authors":"R. Hampel","doi":"10.1353/rah.2022.0045","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/rah.2022.0045","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":43597,"journal":{"name":"REVIEWS IN AMERICAN HISTORY","volume":"50 1","pages":"428 - 441"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2022-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46776934","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
For roughly a decade, historians’ understanding of the antebellum American South has been increasingly influenced by a new burst of scholarship collectively labelled “The New History of Capitalism.” Scholars leading the argument for the New History of Capitalism (NHC) contend with considerable, but sometimes reckless, vigor that the slaveholding South stood on the driving edge of the larger capitalist and imperialist project of the nineteenth century. There is much in these works to recommend an emphasis on capitalism and imperialism as creators of the Old South, certainly as it existed in the late antebellum era, and the region played a large role in the evolution of those two projects. But the core, or rather the heart, of the NHC’s argument places cotton and slavery together as the dominant driving force behind the expansion of both capitalism and imperialism in the nineteenth century world. Yet there are also scholarly cautions that must be acknowledged and even damaging misconceptions and erroneous assumptions that promise to limit the NHC’s influence on the historiography of the Old South over the long term. This new corpus of scholarship characterizes southern slaveholders as acquisitive, expansionist, and possessing a broad ambition for power reaching well beyond their control of enslaved Black people. Collectively, the new NHC literature attempts to radically transform our understanding of the slaveholders’ role in furthering capitalist and imperial designs, not only in the American South but also in other parts of the world. In the NHC’s view, as the South’s slaveholding elite committed itself to pursuing territorial expansion and extending slavery, its aspirations moved beyond mastery and profit toward the building of an empire for cotton and the creation of a truly global economy sustained to a large degree by cotton production in the American South.1 This essay examines the NHC corpus, acknowledging its value, especially as a debating point, but also probes its weaknesses as revealed by existing and contemporary scholarship.
{"title":"State of the Field: A New Historiography for the Old South? Slavery and Capitalism, White Elites and Enslaved Blacks","authors":"Lacy K. Ford","doi":"10.1353/rah.2022.0046","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/rah.2022.0046","url":null,"abstract":"For roughly a decade, historians’ understanding of the antebellum American South has been increasingly influenced by a new burst of scholarship collectively labelled “The New History of Capitalism.” Scholars leading the argument for the New History of Capitalism (NHC) contend with considerable, but sometimes reckless, vigor that the slaveholding South stood on the driving edge of the larger capitalist and imperialist project of the nineteenth century. There is much in these works to recommend an emphasis on capitalism and imperialism as creators of the Old South, certainly as it existed in the late antebellum era, and the region played a large role in the evolution of those two projects. But the core, or rather the heart, of the NHC’s argument places cotton and slavery together as the dominant driving force behind the expansion of both capitalism and imperialism in the nineteenth century world. Yet there are also scholarly cautions that must be acknowledged and even damaging misconceptions and erroneous assumptions that promise to limit the NHC’s influence on the historiography of the Old South over the long term. This new corpus of scholarship characterizes southern slaveholders as acquisitive, expansionist, and possessing a broad ambition for power reaching well beyond their control of enslaved Black people. Collectively, the new NHC literature attempts to radically transform our understanding of the slaveholders’ role in furthering capitalist and imperial designs, not only in the American South but also in other parts of the world. In the NHC’s view, as the South’s slaveholding elite committed itself to pursuing territorial expansion and extending slavery, its aspirations moved beyond mastery and profit toward the building of an empire for cotton and the creation of a truly global economy sustained to a large degree by cotton production in the American South.1 This essay examines the NHC corpus, acknowledging its value, especially as a debating point, but also probes its weaknesses as revealed by existing and contemporary scholarship.","PeriodicalId":43597,"journal":{"name":"REVIEWS IN AMERICAN HISTORY","volume":"50 1","pages":"442 - 467"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2022-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43640209","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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