Steamboats and the Rise of the Cotton Kingdom by Robert Gudemstad (review)

Abstract

Steamboats and Rise of Cotton Kingdom. Robert Gudemstad. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2011. Pp. xii, 280. Cloth, $42.50.)Reviewed by Calvin SchermerhornThis concise and engaging book tells story of technological and market development, social transformation, and ecological change through history of in interior South. It synthesizes previous scholarship and also adds much that is new. The book begins with hopeful and pioneering passage of New Orleans from Pittsburgh to New Orleans in 1811 and ends with Mark Twain's embroidering into a tapestry of memory, one that helped to obscure history Robert Gudmestad invigorates with incisive analysis and often harrowing detail. By 1830s, he contends, steamboats had become workhorses of economy in southern interior, as they enhanced value of slaves, raised plantation productivity, and provided new sources of revenue for planters (158).The architects of steamboat commerce were engaged in a promethean process of capitalist economic development, and were floating engines of capitalism (155). Steamboat entrepreneurs understood that steamboats stood at intersection of risk, opportunity, and power in burgeoning Southwest (8). Americans quickly awoke to their power and promise, and soon were hauling cotton and other commodities to entrepot cities and ferrying finished goods back into interior, creating economic linkages, information networks, and political ties. Operators sought to maximize their cargo capacities, and ambitious captains bragged that their were 'loaded to guards' with bales of cotton by thousands (142). Most were owned by southerners who operated them with Yankee shrewdness. As cotton production grew, so did boats, which became faster, longer, wider, and more capacious.Steamboats were social spaces, and Gudmestad explores steamboat culture from captains, clerks, and pilots down to waiters, chambermaids, and roustabouts, unskilled laborers - often enslaved - who carried heavy cords of wood, rolled barrels of goods, and stacked bales of cotton. An interior view of reveals how social differences were created and reinforced. For instance, middle-class white female passengers confined in parlors and cabin rooms were ostensibly being protected from aggressively masculine culture of deck. Boats' saloons were filled with games and bluster, tobacco and whiskey. First-class passengers allured by ever-loftier claims of luxury and speed were often frustrated at realities of mediocre fare; noisy, filthy, and cramped accommodations; and delays on account of weather, mechanical failure, or operators' intrigues. Deck passengers, including many immigrants, struggled for space, and workers struggled for sleep amid their unremitting toil. Although there were instances of racial comity, Gudmestad contends, the bulk of surviving evidence points to a pattern of racial intolerance and harassment (48). A greater human tragedy also unfolded on steamers.Steamboat operators became agents of two forced migrations taking place simultaneously. Even though Indian Removal is usually associated with a land journey, Gudmestad argues, the majority of Native Americans traveled all or part of way to Oklahoma in steamers (79). Gudmestad contends that steamers' technological advancements that made them essential to commercial transformation of country also seemed to make them attractive to agents removing Choctaws, Chickasaws, Creeks, Cherokees, Seminoles, and even enslaved people whom some Indians claimed as property. …