Cotton Capitalists: American Jewish Entrepreneurship in the Reconstruction Era

by Michael R Cohen

Overview

“Effectively argues that ethnic networks were important to...Jewish businesses as they participated in the cotton economy.” —Choice
 
In the nineteenth century, Jewish merchants created a thriving niche economy in the United States’ most important industry—cotton. Cotton Capitalists argues that Jewish merchants’ status as a minority fueled their success by fostering ethnic networks of trust. Trust in the nineteenth century was the cornerstone of economic transactions, and this trust was largely fostered by ethnicity. Much as money flowed along ethnic lines between Anglo-American banks, Jewish merchants in the Gulf South used their own ethnic ties with other Jewish-owned firms in New York, as well as Jewish investors across the globe, to capitalize their businesses. They relied on these family connections to direct Northern credit and goods to the war-torn South, avoiding the constraints of the anti-Jewish prejudices which had previously denied them access to credit, allowing them to survive economic downturns.

These American Jewish merchants reveal that ethnicity matters in the development of global capitalism. The story of Jews in the American cotton trade is far more than the story of American Jewish success and integration—it is the story of the role of ethnicity in the development of global capitalism.
 

“This eloquent study reminds us that we cannot fully understand the Souths economic revival in the age of reconstruction without looking at the critical role played by immigrant Jewish merchants.” —Rebecca Kobrin, Knapp Associate Professor of American Jewish History, Columbia University
 
“Michael R Cohens...well-written book, reveals how...Jews played a key role in building the cotton economy of the South.” ―The Jewish Chronicle

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781479881017
Publisher:	New York University Press
Publication date:	11/21/2023
Series:	Goldstein-Goren Series in American Jewish History , #8
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	300
File size:	44 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

Michael Cohen is Professor and chair of Jewish Studies at Tulane University, where he holds a Sizeler Professorship. He is the author of Cotton Capitalists: American Jewish Entrepreneuship in the Reconstruction Era (NYU Press, 2017) and The Birth of Conservative Judaism: Solomon Schechter's Disciples and the Creation of an American Religious Movement (Columbia University Press, 2012).

Table of Contents

List of Figures ix

List of Maps xi

Acknowledgments xiii

Introduction 1

1 The Antebellum Cotton Economy 24

2 The War Years 58

3 Timing Is Everything 82

4 Networks from Above 124

5 Networks from Below 153

6 The End of the Niche Economy 181

Conclusion 199

Notes 203

Index 247

About the Author 259

Editorial Reviews

"For a few decades after the Civil War, Jewish Americans played a key role in the southern cotton economy, infusing European and New York capital into the fields of a region still devastated by war, while organizing the trade in a crop central to the nation. Charting the rise and fall of this southern cotton complex, Cohen emphasizes the role of dense ethnic networks in fostering the all-important trust in which trade and credit were embedded. An important contribution to American economic history."-Sven Beckert,author of Empire of Cotton

"This model study exposes the previously unknown Jewish ethnic network that filled a critical niche in the southern cotton trade during the second half of the nineteenth century. A major contribution with broad implications for students of economic history, Jewish history, and the history of the American South."-Jonathan D. Sarna,author of When General Grant Expelled the Jews

"Historian Cohen (Tulane) presents a different perspective, examining the role of Jewish merchants in the antebellum South as they transitioned from peddlers to shopkeepers and extended credit and goods to local cotton producers…[Making] excellent use of the R. G. Dun credit reports and the American Jewish Archives, Cohen effectively argues that ethnic networks were important to these small Jewish businesses as they participated in the cotton economy."- Choice

"Michael Cohen masterfully narrates how Jewish merchants provided much needed credit in the South following the Civil War. This eloquent study reminds us that we cannot fully understand the South’s economic revival in the age of reconstruction without looking at the critical role played by immigrant Jewish merchants."-Rebecca Kobrin,Knapp Associate Professor of American Jewish History, Columbia University

"Michael R Cohen’s...well-written book, reveals how the incomers’ familial and, so to speak, tribal links with northern financiers and others across the world, modernised business in the South — indeed, that these few hundred Jews played a key role in building the cotton economy of the South towards its crescendo in the 19th and 20th."- The Jewish Chronicle

From the Publisher