Cotton Capitalists

Abstract

Jewish merchants created a niche economy in the United States’ most important industry—cotton—which positioned them at the forefront of capitalist expansion for much of the second half of the nineteenth century. This book analyzes that niche economy and asks how it came to be. It argues that timing mattered, alongside a host of other structural factors, which created the conditions that allowed Jewish merchants to succeed in this particular capitalism. But it also argues that, within this milieu, the Jewish merchants’ status as a minority fueled their niche economy by fostering ethnic networks of trust. Trust served as the cornerstone of financial relationships, and it was frequently cultivated by shared ethnicity. While this book investigates the ways in which both structural factors and ethnic networks mattered in the emergence of this particular niche economy, it also acts as a case study that explores how ethnicity mattered in the development of global capitalism. The story of these American Jewish merchants is far more than the story of American Jewish success and integration—it is the story of how ethnicity mattered in the development of global capitalism.