by Richard Follett
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Product Description
Focusing on the masterslave relationship in Louisiana's antebellum sugarcane country, The Sugar Masters explores how a modern, capitalist mindset among planters meshed with oldstyle paternalistic attitudes to create one of the South's most insidiously oppressive labor systems. As author Richard Follett vividly demonstrates, the agricultural paradise of Louisiana's thriving sugarcane fields came at an unconscionable cost to slaves. But above all, labor management was the secret to the planters' impressive success. Follett explains how in exchange for increased productivity and efficiency planters offered their slaves a range of incentives, such as greater autonomy, improved accommodations, and even financial remuneration. These material gains, however, were only short term. Until recently, scholars have viewed planters as either paternalistic lords who eschewed marketplace values or as entrepreneurs driven to business success. Follett offers a new view of the sugar masters as embracing both the capitalist market and a social ideology based on hierarchy, honor, and paternalism. His stunning synthesis of empirical research, demographics study, and social and cultural history sets a new standard for this subject. AUTHOR BIO: Richard Follett teaches American history at the University of Sussex, England.
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Average Customer Review:
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
Great!!, 2008-10-15
I thoroughly enjoyed Follet's book. It is well researched, well written and shows how the desire for economic success by the Lousiana planter class drove the ideology and practice of slavery on the sugar plantation. Follet also shows us how slaves attempted to derive economic and personal independence within the contstraints of the plantation economy and racism. The Lousiana sugar economy differed from other sugar economies in the Caribbean and Follet shows it in its very particular context while touching on broader themes in the antebellum South and U.S. history as a whole. My only regret is the organization of the work, which wasn't clearly outlined and seemed to flow from one topic to another without real warning or structure, though with logic. But other than that, I found it thoroughly instructive, thoughtful, and objective.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
A very highly recommended addition to academic library collections, 2007-08-03
"The Sugar Masters: Planters And Slaves In Louisiana's Cane World, 1820-1860" by Richard Follett (American History Instructor, University of Sussex, England) is an analytical history of the employment of slaves in the sugar cane industry as practiced in Louisiana during the early 19th century. The focus is on labor management practices used to control and exploit a slave-oriented labor system within the contemporary context of capitalism, hierarch, paternalism, and ethics. A seminal contribution to pre-emancipation Louisiana, "The Sugar Masters" is a model of scholarship in terms of the underlying empirical research, as a demographic study, and in expanded our understanding of the social and cultural history of slavery, agricultural, and cultural practices of the era. A very highly recommended addition to academic library collections, "The Sugar Masters" is especially recommended reading for students in the disciplines of Black History, American History, Louisiana History, and American Economic History.
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