IN THE SHADOW OF THE GREAT HOUSE

A multicentury account of the plantation and its enduring legacy.

This expansive history by University of Georgia scholar Rood upends the popular notion that the plantation existed only in the Deep South and disappeared immediately after the Civil War. Rood demonstrates that the plantation, defined by its specialization, centralized management, and exploitation of “a racialized labor force with an inferior legal status,” was fundamental to the growth of the American colonies. Moreover, Rood argues, its impact is still very much alive today in the “cheap meat” at “mega retailers” and in the ethanol at gas pumps. In 1672, white Barbadian planters imported “their draconian slave code and a burgeoning racist ideology” with them to the British colony of Carolina. That model was replicated in Georgia, even as a different plantation system developed in Virginia. These plantations and their owners not only shaped the economy, but were fundamental to the political ideology of the emergent nation. Consider, writes the author, that a “Virginia tobacco planter served as president or vice president in each of the first seven presidential administrations in U.S. history.” Indeed, Rood says, these Virginians’ livelihoods were so tied to the plantation model that they could not conceive of “life, liberty, and happiness for whites without Black enslavement.” But this is just one part of the plantation story. Rood follows its development through the Civil War and into post-war survival in new forms and new locations, including California and the Global South. As the plantation labor force changed from enslaved people to sharecroppers, Mexican braceros, and Guatemalan asylum seekers, the abuse of labor remained (and remains) a constant. What could have been a dry, economic study becomes a far more personal and affecting account through Rood’s consistent foregrounding of the humanity, resilience, and skill of plantation laborers who introduce new crops, foodways, and agricultural techniques, and forge families and communities—even in the most dire circumstances.

An important and revelatory work that brings economic history to life with narrative and nuance.