An Anxious Pursuit: Agricultural Innovation and Modernity in the Lower South, 1730-1815

Joyce Chaplin examines the impact of Enlightenment ideas of progress on the lives and minds of American planters in the colonial Lower South. She focuses particularly on the influence of Scottish notions of progress, tracing the extent to which planters perceived themselves as a modern, improving people. She also uses developments in agricultural practice as indices of planters' desire for progress and demonstrates the central role played by slavery in their pursuit of modern life.