Cultivating capitalism: Sea Island Cotton, planter identity, and Atlantic connections in Antebellum Beaufort County, South Carolina
Journal: JMU Scholoraly Commons (James Madison University)
Year: 2015

Studies of southern planters and cotton litter the scholarship about antebellum America. These works often debate the capitalist, pre-capitalist, or anti-capitalist nature of the southern economy and slave-based plantation agriculture. This study examines how antebellum sea island cotton planters in South Carolina identified themselves and practiced as capitalists in the Atlantic World. Their identity was shaped by ongoing discussions in The Southern Agriculturalist which was published in Charle