Debating Slavery : Economy and Society in the Antebellum American South (New Studies in Economic and Social History)

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Summary: Mark M. Smith's writing and pedagogy...
Review: For the first time, when a professor assigned his book, I was happy to read it. Smith's doe brown eyes didn't hurt, either.

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Summary: Useless marxist analysis
Review: Great book if you want to explore the feebleness of marxist analysis. Authors spend two of seven chapters trying to work out a definition of profit. Well, you will not get an analysis of profitability if you do not have a useful definition of profit. Besides, in 20th century America (when this book was written) there was no problem with the definition of profit, so what was their problem? Their problem, of course, is they are marxists, and a mighty big problem that turns out to be.
If you want an economic analysis of Southern slavery, you will do better with "Time On The Cross", which is one of the earliest exercises in investigating ante-bellum slavery with modern economic tools.

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Summary: A Dull Primer on the Historiography of Slavery
Review: In 'Debating Slavery', Mark M. Smith has made quite an achievement: he took two topics which I personally find fascinating - American Negro Slavery and Historiography - and managed to produce a sordid essay, that is almost entirely unenlightening and literally painful to read.

Smith's book exposes the opinions of scholars of slavery on several key questions about the 'peculiar institution': Was slavery profitable? Were slave owners Capitalists? And to what extent did the owners control the life and culture of slaves?

Smith's answer to all these questions seems to be a variation on 'to an extent'. Slaveholders were part Capitalist and part not Capitalists, and what is Capitalism anyway? The Slaves had their own culture but where very influenced by the masters, etc. I don't mind ambiguity and nuance in analysis, but Smith comes off not as complex but as indecisive.

It doesn't help that Smith's narrative is little more then a list of scholars's opinions, along with citations and reference. There are some attempts to flash out the argument (often using graphs and charts), but those are halfhearted. Smith seems to think that reference is a substitute for an argument.

In what is essentially an extended bibliographical essay, one would expect a useful list of works sited. Unfortunately, even that is not properly done. After a short list of 'general books', Smith goes on to put a separate bibliography for each chapter, without repeating titles. As a result, if you are trying to locate a reference to a book in chapter five, for instance, you may have to look through the bibliographies of all the preceding chapters, as the work you're looking for may be mentioned in any of them.

All in all, Debating Slavery is a mercilessly bad book. The only good thing I can say about it is that it is short; but that just means it's overpriced :-)

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Summary: A Brilliant and Provocative Analysis
Review: In his second book on slavery in two years, Professor Mark Smith of the Unievrsity of South Carolina has established himself as one of this generation's more astute historians. Eschewing traditional "either-or" schools of historical interpretation, he provides a rational, yet passionate, examination of the institution of slavery. While older historians have gotten themselves all wrapped up in economic theories with all sorts of litmus tests, Smith takes a more reasoned approach. Was the South pre-modern? (In some ways, it was). Was the South modern? (In some ways, it was). This is not acadmeic equivocationg, for Smith makes a strong argument that the South was BOTH. His concluding paragraph says it all: "Instead of arguing for the modernity or premodernity of the Old South, we can begin to see how the region, while it retained slavery as the basis for its political identity and social and economic relations, was none the less modernizing its economic system even as it eschewed the democratic tendencies of nineteenth-century liberalism." Brilliantly argued in highly readable prose, this is a must-read for anyone who truly wants to understand the Old South.