| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 109.4

You have not been recognized as a subscriber to the AHR online. About 295 words from this article are provided below; about 602 words remain.

If you are a individual member of the American Historical Association, you may:: • login here if you have already registered for online access.; • Or if you're already logged in register your subscription.
• Set up your online account for the first time. AHA members can go to the AHA individual membership section to locate their member numbers.
If you are not a member of the American Historical Association, you can:: • Join the AHA and receive many member benefits including print and electronic issues of the American Historical Review.
• Purchase a research pass to gain two hour access to the entire History Cooperative web site. You will have full access to current issues of the American Historical Review (104.3-present). Note: the Research Pass does not provide access to JSTOR's holdings of the American Historical Review.
Instititutions can:: • Subscribe to this journal and receive print and electronic issues.
• Activate your existing subscription so that we recognize your IP number ranges.

| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 109.4 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Canada and the United States

David L. Carlton and Peter A. Coclanis. The South, the Nation, and the World: Perspectives on Southern Economic Development. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia. 2003. Pp. 234. Cloth $49.50, paper $19.50.
For David L. Carlton and Peter A. Coclanis, "the foremost question in southern economic history" (p. 3) is the one C. Vann Woodward posed: why did the South lag in economic development? Their answer is provided in eleven separate essays: five by Carlton, three by Coclanis, and three coauthored. For them, southern underdevelopment was rooted in the growth-retarding consequences of plantation agriculture. Although they recognize that the essays collected here will not be the last word on the subject, this book, taken as a whole, makes a convincing case, particularly for the antebellum period.	1
Carlton and Coclanis emphasize that southern plantations were owned and managed by rational, profit-seeking entrepreneurs. They were never premodern. Indeed, the reason that western hemisphere slavery existed was that "the early modern age had yet to figure out how to mobilize" (p. 5) a free labor force of the size necessary to satisfy the desires of those entrepreneurs. Yet, as Coclanis writes, "the southern plantation system, along with the system of forced labor and racial domination it fostered and depended upon effectively stifled the development of either industrial communities or industrial institutions" (p. 169). Largely autarchic plantations and their slave labor force provided only a limited market for industrial goods. At the same time, the urban centers that did emerge in the region served planter marketing and credit needs but were stunted in size and dynamism. The problem was not cultural. Industrialization was retarded because of "slave-under consumption, planter and yeoman self-reliance and poor market integration" (p. 170).	. . .

There are about 602 more words in this article. Please log in (or, if you are not yet an authorized user, please go to the User Setup page) to gain full access rights. Or if you're already logged in register your subscription.