Shifting Regimes: Progressive Southern Agriculture and the Enslaved Community

Author(s): Kevin Fogle

Year: 2017

Summary

The late antebellum period witnessed the rise of an agricultural reform movement aimed at revitalizing the southern plantation system. Soil degradation from intensive cash crop cultivation contributed to the decreasing productivity of once prosperous farmland in many southern communities. Drawing on Enlightenment principles and scientific farming innovations such as crop rotation, fertilization, and soil chemistry, this progressive agricultural discourse attempted to maximize the efficiency of the entire plantation system from the land and the crops to the enslaved labor that drove it. Using historical and archaeological data, this paper looks at the implementation of agrarian reform principles on a single 19th century cotton plantation and the complex influence these reforms had upon the local enslaved community.

Cite this Record

Shifting Regimes: Progressive Southern Agriculture and the Enslaved Community. Kevin Fogle. Presented at Society for Historical Archaeology, Fort Worth, TX. 2017 ( tDAR id: 435405)

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

Spatial Coverage

min long: -129.199; min lat: 24.495 ; max long: -66.973; max lat: 49.359 ;

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): 305