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Overview"Since the earliest days of colonial America, the relationship between cotton and the African-American experience has been central to the history of the republic. America's most serious social tragedy, slavery and its legacy, spread only where cotton could be grown. Both before and after the Civil War, blacks were assigned to the cotton fields while a pervasive racial animosity and fear of a black migratory invasion caused white Northerners to contain blacks in the South. Gene Dattel's pioneering study explores the historical roots of these most central social issues. In telling detail Mr. Dattel shows why the vastly underappreciated story of cotton is a key to understanding America's rise to economic power. When cotton production exploded to satiate the nineteenth-century textile industry's enormous appetite, it became the first truly complex global business and thereby a major driving force in U.S. territorial expansion and sectional economic integration. It propelled New York City to commercial preeminence and fostered independent trade between Europe and the United States, providing export capital for the new nation to gain its financial ""sea legs"" in the world economy. Without slave-produced cotton, the South could never have initiated the Civil War, America's bloodiest conflict at home. Mr. Dattel's skillful historical analysis identifies the commercial forces that cotton unleashed and the pervasive nature of racial antipathy it produced. This is a story that has never been told in quite the same way before, related here with the authority of a historian with a profound knowledge of the history of international finance. With 23 black-and-white illustrations." Full Product DetailsAuthor: Gene DattelPublisher: Ivan R Dee, Inc Imprint: Ivan R Dee, Inc Dimensions: Width: 15.90cm , Height: 3.00cm , Length: 23.70cm Weight: 0.680kg ISBN: 9781566639682ISBN 10: 1566639689 Pages: 432 Publication Date: 16 December 2011 Audience: General/trade , General Format: Paperback Publisher's Status: Active Availability: In Print  This item will be ordered in for you from one of our suppliers. Upon receipt, we will promptly dispatch it out to you. For in store availability, please contact us. Table of ContentsPart I: Slavery in the Making of the Constitution Chapter 1: The Silent Issue at the Constitutional Convention Part II: The Engine of American Growth, 1787–1861 Chapter 2: Birth of an Obsession Chapter 3: Land Expansion and White Migration to the Old Southwest Chapter 4: The Movement of Slaves to the Cotton States Chapter 5: The Business of Cotton Chapter 6: The Roots of War Part III: The North: For Whites Only, 1800–1865 Chapter 7: Being Free and Black in the North Chapter 8: The Colonial North Chapter 9: Race Moves West Chapter 10: Tocqueville on Slavery, Race, and Money in America Part IV: King Cotton Buys a War Chapter 11: Cultivating a Crop, Cultivating a Strategy Chapter 12: Great Britain and the Civil War Chapter 13: Cotton and Confederate Finance Chapter 14: Procuring Arms Chapter 15: Cotton Trading in the United States Chapter 16: Cotton and the Freedmen Part V: The Racial Divide and Cotton Labor, 1865–1930 Chapter 17: New Era, Old Problems Chapter 18: Ruling the Freedmen in the Cotton Fields Chapter 19: Reconstruction Meets Reality Chapter 20: The Black Hand on the Cotton Boll Chapter 21: From Cotton Field to Urban Ghetto: The Chicago Experience Part VI: Cotton Without Slaves, 1865–1930 Chapter 22: King Cotton Expands Chapter 23: The Controlling Laws of Cotton Finance Chapter 24: The Delta Plantation: Labor and Land Chapter 25: The Planter Experience in the Twentieth Century Chapter 26: The Long-Awaited Mechanical Cotton Picker Chapter 27: The Abdication of King CottonReviewsThis is a book not just for those who grew up in the cotton fields of Mississippi as I did, but far more than that it is a challenging and compelling account of the complex role which cotton has played in the economic, racial, and political history of our nation. No one is better equipped to present that story than Gene Dattel, a superbly gifted writer, who also happens to possess an encyclopedic knowledge of this fascinating subject. This volume elevates to an important new level our comprehension and appreciation of a largely neglected chapter in our conflicted past.--Winter, William F. Gene Dattel s book tells the story of the irresistible power of cotton that changed the destiny of the nation not just the region. America s material obsession blossomed in the cotton fields, where blacks were trapped. Racial hostility both North and South was the enabler. His book masterfully captures the history and its painful legacy.--Freeman, Morgan Books about American history tend to be either triumphal or highly critical. Gene Dattel s study of the racial legacy of cotton, America s leading export up to World War II, is neither. Above all, it is informed, honest, and balanced. Dattel explains insightfully just how slavery and racial discrimination came to plague our nation s ideals and the promise of American life. Mostly it was a by-product north and south, east and west of trying to earn a buck, of pursuing the Almighty Dollar. His book is a gem one of the finest works on the American national experience to appear in many years.--Richard Sylla I am very impressed by the extensiveness of the research, the quality of the writing, and the vigor of the narrative. Gene Dattel has produced an important book that shows how 'King Cotton' could, all too often, be a cruel tyrant. The book will be welcomed by both specialists and the general reader.--McCardell, John Author InformationGene Dattel grew up in the cotton country of the Mississippi Delta and studied history at Yale and law at Vanderbilt. He then embarked on a twenty-year career in financial capital markets as a managing director at Salomon Brothers and at Morgan Stanley. A consultant to major financial institutions and to the Pentagon, he established a reputation as a foremost authority on Asian economies. His The Sun That Never Rose remains the definitive work on Japanese financial institutions in the 1980s. Mr. Dattel is now an independent scholar who lectures widely and has served as an adviser to the New York Historical Society and the B. B. King Museum. He lives in New York City. For more information, see www.genedattel.com. Tab Content 6Author Website:Countries AvailableAll regions |
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