Customer Reviews

Tobacco and Slaves: The Development of Southern Cultures in the Chesapeake, 1680-1800

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Tobacco and Slaves is a synthesis that attempts to trace the development of culture in Maryland and Virginia. He approaches this task in three parts; the first is a very detailed survey of demographic and economic development, while the second and third parts analyze the formation of white and black societies. A materialist/New Left framework shapes Kulikoff's interpretations in that he acknowledges that "this work is predicated upon a form of historical materialism that gives material conditions (demography and the economy in particular) a privileged role in the formation of ideologies, classes, and cultures" (16). Additionally, the book's theme centers on the development and relationship of economic classes. Yet, Kulikoff seems to be consciously avoiding a "bottom-up" approach to history that tends to shape much of the work produced by the New Left. Instead, he attempts, sometime awkwardly, to show the whole of Chesapeake society, black and white, as it developed over one hundred twenty years.

There is much to praise in this book, the scope of material presented and researched is impressive, and Kulikoff's survey of slave families is quite valuable. One drawback is that his insistence on materialistic causation minimizes human agency and gives short-shrift to the complexities of human motivations and behaviors. Indeed, the materialist model is not entirely satisfactory, but the reader does not need to accept all of Kulikoff's conclusions to appreciate the complexities of Chesapeake society that he so ably presents.

I bought this book for a research project I was working on for my history class, and I never found a book more tedious than this one. Kulikoff focuses his research on economic and demographic statistics explained in very long, boring paragraphs. In addition to that he highlights the statistics with MANY charts and graphs. For a reader wanting to know the social history on Tobacco and Slaves in the early Chesapeake, this book is NOT for you. If you're looking for numbers and dates and charts, look no further.

Almost everything went as expected. However, the book has several pencil marks inside, which it was not reported in book's add.