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But you do have to agree that that agricultural economy made other industries possible. The agricultural part formed the base of a pyramidal industrial setup.
by finid 12y ago
But you do have to agree that that agricultural economy made other industries possible. The agricultural part formed the base of a pyramidal industrial setup.
- dllthomas 12y agoYou mean, "so it is still an example of slavery being, indirectly, the base of an industrial society"? That's probably fair.
- ArkyBeagle 12y agoSlavery still seems more of a colonial (hence Mercantilist) feature than an industrial (hence Capitalist) feature - to me, anyway. Michener's excellent "Caribbean" discusses this in some detail.
- ArkyBeagle 12y agoAs simple as that question seems, I'm sorta unsure how to answer it. Cotton was a boom crop that had huge demand in the textile mills. Tobacco preceded it, and for all I know, with tobacco farming, slavery would have ended on its own. Tobacco is much higher-skill than cotton, and that could easily have led to a much gentler slope out of slavery. It's all a tangled mess of counterfactuals. The aristocrats in the South were definitely riding the tiger, and could not afford to compromise on the Peculiar Institution.