Cotton Capitalists: American Jewish Entrepreneurship in the Reconstruction Era

"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 larg...