List Books » The Roots of Southern Populism: Yeoman Farmers and the Transformation of the Georgia Upcountry, 1850-1890
Authors: Steven Hahn
ISBN-13: 9780195306705, ISBN-10: 0195306708
Format: Paperback
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Date Published: April 2006
Edition: 1st Edition
Despite the vast changes in plantation agriculture following the Civil War and Reconstruction, the lot of small farmers was little improved. Examining the nonplantation region of upcountry Georgia as a microcosm of the South, Steven Hahn showed how farmers were buffeted by such forces as the unravelling of antebellum household economy, the development of market forces, the growth of a new class of merchants-landlords, and rising tensions between town and countrysideand how their resentments fueld the Populist movement at the end of the 19th century. For this updated edition, Hahn will add new material to discuss how the book has stood up since it was published over twenty years ago, how the arguments and questions were received, and what influence they may have had on scholarship. He will also consider what has happened to historical interest in Populism, poor white people and populist politics, as well as why he thinks it likely that interest may revive and what sort of questions and arguments may drive it.
Pt. 1 | "The poor man's best government" | |
1 | "Society in the up country" | 15 |
2 | Bounds of custom | 50 |
3 | The politics of independence | 86 |
Pt. 2 | The vortex of the cotton economy | |
4 | The transformation of the countryside | 137 |
5 | Merchants, farmers, and the marketplace | 170 |
6 | Power and politics | 204 |
7 | Common right and commonwealth | 239 |
Epilogue : the contours of populism | 269 |