HIST 12B Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: The Shaw Group, Neoliberalism, Statute
Document Summary
By 1860 mississippi had 3,500 steamboats, representing about 160,000 tons of shipping, carrying million worth of goods (mostly cotton) to market. Slave labor - key to the entire cotton-based capitalist economy. 1801, 9 percent of the world"s cotton came from the usa and 60% from asia. By 1840 the south grew more than 60 percent of the world"s cotton. Cotton accounted for over half the value of all american exports. Contributed to the growth of new york city. The large planters among richest men in the country; by 1860 two-thirds of the wealthiest americans lived in the south -- there were more millionaires per capita in the. Mississippi valley than anywhere else in the united states. Prompted massive internal/domestic slave trade; transported close to one million enslaved people from the chesapeake and other atlantic coastal regions to the lower mississippi valley. Upside: initially, fairly flexible: enslaved could be employed in response to market conditions.
