DOC American Mediterranean: Southern Slaveholders in the Age of Emancipation by Matthew Pratt Guterl in History

Review

0 of 0 people found the following review helpful. Southern Slaveholders part of an American MediterraneanBy ZackWhat an excellent book. Useful for anyone interested in U.S. southern slaveholders in the mid nineteenth century as well as their reactions to emancipation and the Civil War. This work broadens their place in the world to the Caribbean and South America. It demonstrates how they may have had more links to these other nations than to their own in the North.2 of 3 people found the following review helpful. Examining 19th Century trade and laborBy Lionel S. TaylorIn the book American Mediterranean Matthew Guterl examines the antebellum and postbellum south in a manner that it haas rarly been looked at. Abandoning the traditional framing of American History he puts it in the greater context of the slave holding countries of the New World. This revels some intresting parallels and common intrests between Latin American and Carribean slave holders and those in the southern United States. In his book he demonstrates that the planter class of America had more things in common when it came to the nature of labor; race relations and trade with their fellow planters in Cuba and Brazil than in the U.S. With the slow demise of the "peculiar institution" in the late 19th century all of thes various groups would find them selves in similar situations as they sought desperatly for cheap labor they had come to depend on to keep the plantations profitable. This will bring them into direct competition with their fellow Latin American planters. Overall i found this a very intreasting read with implications for our modern economy and labor relations.