Slave Country
American Expansion and the Origins of the Deep South
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 9329050 |
|---|---|
| Authors | J P Rodríguez, Jonathan Rodrı́guez (0000-0001-9829-0955, Eureka College, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2006 |
| Volume | 92 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 1425-1426 |
| Publication date | 2006-03-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal of American History (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0021-8723 • E-ISSN: 1945-2314 |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press (OUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.2307/4485924 |
| OpenAlex | W2075151079 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 7 |
Adam Rothman's Slave Country is destined to be included on the must-read list of any serious student of antebellum slavery in the United States. The work is both significant and formative in that it recognizes the establishment of the new states of Louisiana (1812), Mississippi (1817), and Alabama (1819) as portending the formation of a Deep South ethos that defended slavery at all costs. Along with this geographic expansion, Rothman associates the concomitant rise of upland cotton and sugar, which unleashed new market forces and an insatiable demand that could be matched only by a rigid defense of the peculiar institution. In this regional transformation, the particular demands of the Deep South became the driving force behind national policy as the exigencies of regionalism became central to national life. Rather than viewing the settlement of the Old Southwest as an inevitable consequence that followed a predetermined plan, Rothman examines the work in progress that was the United States in the early nineteenth century and posits that the southern frontier fashioned the means of its own creation. In a sweeping narrative that finds prescient links between territorial expansion, war, free-market capitalism, and Indian removal, the work traces how the special needs of the Deep South brought about an entrenchment of slavery in a nation that was morally ambivalent to the institution. Despite the hopeful rhetoric of liberty of which the Founders had spoken and the congressional action to outlaw the transatlantic slave trade in 1808, the global economic forces that esteemed sugar and cotton would trump any efforts to ameliorate the bane of slavery in the United States
Capitalism · Economic history · Ethos · Frontier · Institution · Narrative · Political economy · Political science · Rhetoric · Sociology · Colonialism, slavery, and trade · Cuban History and Society · History · Law · Race, History, and American Society
| Unique citing works | 7 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,47 |
| Citation span | 2011 - 2025 (15) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 6 |