A History of Transportation in the Eastern Cotton Belt to 1860 (Southern Classics (Univ of South Carolina)) - Softcover

Phillips, Ulrich Bonnell

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1570039658 ISBN 13: 9781570039652

Publisher: University of South Carolina Press, 2011

Synopsis

A History of Transportation in the Eastern Cotton Belt to 1860 (1908) was Southern historian Ulrich Bonnell Phillips's first major monograph and has stood for over a century as one of the principal studies of transportation in the antebellum South. In this work Phillips (1877-1934) used a detailed exploration of the development of the railroad systems in Georgia and South Carolina to probe the structure, accomplishments, and limitations of the antebellum Southern economy. For Phillips the region's economic identity as a producer of staple crops determined its transportation priorities. He carefully outlined the restrictions and opportunities created by Southern geography, economy, and labor structure as a precursor to his examination of every railroad corporation established in South Carolina and Georgia before the Civil War. If railroads represented an outstanding accomplishment of the South, Phillips argued, the railroads also demonstrated the limits of the antebellum economy. Although railroads were essential to the South's livelihood, the technological revolution did not transform the region or liberate it from the the cotton- and slave-based economy that Phillips believed stunted its growth. Phillips saw Southern railroads chiefly as an improvement in carrying staple goods to the coast-as part of a traditional economic system-rather than dynamically contributing to the region's evolution and diversification.

About this title

Review:

Phillips has written a scholarly book rich in detail. He has placed students of social as well as economic history under lasting obligations. Journal of Political Economy

About the Author:

The accomplished historian Ulrich Bonnell Phillips held teaching positions at the University of Wisconsin, Tulane University, the University of Michigan, and Yale University. His other books include Life and Labor in the Old South and American Negro Slavery, long considered a basic text on the subject.|Aaron W. Marrs is a historian at the U.S. Department of State. He earned his Ph.D. in history from the University of South Carolina and is the author of Railroads in the Old South: Pursuing Progress in a Slave Society. Marrs also served as associate managing editor of The South Carolina Encyclopedia.

About this edition

• Publisher: University of South Carolina Press
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 1570039658
• ISBN 13: 9781570039652
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 432