Britain and the American South: From Colonialism to Rock and Roll edited
by Joseph P. Ward, with essays by R. J. M. Blackett, Kathryn E. Holland
Braund, Holly Brewer, S. Max Edelson, Franklin T. Lambert, Michael
O'Brien, Brian Ward, Hugh Wilford, and Marcus Wood. In this volume of
collected essays, historians analyze central aspects of the cultural
exchanges between Britain and the American South. Along with the Spanish
and the French, the British were among the first Europeans to have
contact with the native peoples in what would come to be known as the
American South. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the
British were intensively engaged in colonizing much of the region and
developing its economy. The American Revolution severed the governmental
links between Britain and its Southern colonies, but economic, social,
religious, and cultural ties persevered during the nineteenth and
twentieth centuries. The volume illuminates Britain's evolving
relationship with the South over a period of four centuries, an era that
witnessed Britain's rise to imperial dominance and then the gradual
erosion of its influence on the wider world. It considers the British
influence upon, and often critical responses to, Southern institutions
and cultural formations such as religion, gentility, slavery, and music.
Two essays focus on Britain's response to the Confederacy, while others
look even further into the past, concentrating on the English legacy in
colonial times, its influence on Southern religion, and Britain's
relationship with the Creek Indians. Moving into the twentieth century,
the book features analysis of the South's relationship to the British
Left from 1930 to 1960, and an investigation of the South's role in
1950s British popular music. With an engaging afterword that explores
the difficulties in comprehending both Britain and the American South in
the present day as well as in the past, this book shows that the
relationship between the two has always been and continues to be
complex, subtle, and meaningful. Joseph P. Ward is chair of the history
department at the University of Mississippi.
