How global competition brought the plantation kingdom to its knees.
In 1850, America's plantation economy reigned supreme. U.S. cotton
dominated world markets, and American rice, sugarcane, and tobacco grew
throughout a vast farming empire that stretched from Maryland to Texas.
Four million enslaved African Americans toiled the fields, producing
global commodities that enriched the most powerful class of slaveholders
the world had ever known. But fifty years later--after emancipation
demolished the plantation-labor system, Asian competition flooded world
markets with cheap raw materials, and free trade eliminated protected
markets--America's plantations lay in ruins.
Plantation Kingdom traces the rise and fall of America's plantation
economy. Written by four renowned historians, the book demonstrates how
an international capitalist system rose out of slave labor, indentured
servitude, and the mass production of agricultural commodities for world
markets. Vast estates continued to exist after emancipation, but tenancy
and sharecropping replaced slavery's work gangs across most of the
plantation world. Poverty and forced labor haunted the region well into
the twentieth century.
The book explores the importance of slavery to the Old South, the
astounding profitability of plantation agriculture, and the legacy of
emancipation. It also examines the place of American producers in world
markets and considers the impact of globalization and international
competition 150 years ago. Written for scholars and students alike,
Plantation Kingdom is an accessible and fascinating study.
