Michael D. Thompson. Working on the Dock of the Bay

Integrating the experience of enslaved workers into the broader currents of labor history is an ongoing project, of which Michael D. Thompson’s Working on the Dock of the Bay: Labor and Enterprise in an Antebellum Southern Port is a welcome addition. In this concise, but densely evidenced, study of life and labor on Charleston’s antebellum waterfront, Thompson seeks to uncover the impact of slavery upon the strenuous work of loading and unloading vessels, which was so critical to a port town’s economy. He ably reconstructs the backbreaking and dangerous work done in coastal South Carolina’s hot and humid climate, but also seeks to understand the wider implications of racial identity among the black and white laborers who struggled to make ends meet under challenging circumstances. Although Charleston’s presence in the economy of the Atlantic world underwent a relative decline by the advent of the American Civil War, readers will find this case study useful in exploring the interplay of agency and control in a very fluid social landscape.

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