The Plantation - Paperback

by Edgar Tristram Thompson (Author), Sidney W. Mintz (Editor), George Baca (Editor)

A rare classic in American social science, Edgar Thompson's 1932 University of Chicago dissertation, "The Plantation," broke new analytic ground in the study of the southern plantation system. Thompson refuted long-espoused climatic theories of the origins of plantation societies and offered instead a richly nuanced understanding of the links between plantation culture, the global history of capitalism, and the political and economic contexts of hierarchical social classification. This first complete publication of Thompson's study makes available to modern readers one of the earliest attempts to reinterpret the history of the American South as an integral part of global processes. In this Southern Classics edition, editors Sidney W. Minz and George Baca provide a thorough introduction explicating Thompson's guiding principles and grounding his germinal work in its historical context.

Front Jacket

The first complete publication of an overlooked gem in American intellectual history

Back Jacket

The first complete publication of an overlooked gem in American intellectual history

Author Biography

George Baca is a research scholar in anthropology at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York and Dong-A University in Pusan, South Korea. He is an associate editor of Dialectical Anthropology and the author of Conjuring Crisis: Racism and Civil Rights in a Southern Military Town.