
Masters and Lords
Mid-Nineteenth-Century US Planters and Prussian Junkers
Shearer Davis Bowman(Author)
Oxford University Press Inc
Published on 29. July 1993
Book
Hardback
384 pages
978-0-19-505281-7 (ISBN)
Description
Masters and Lords is an ambitious study that presents a comparative view of large planters in the antebellum American South (1820 - 60) and the Junkers of roughly contemporaneous Prussian East Elbia. The author claims that planters and Junkers were comparable because of structural and function analogies between plantations and Ritterguter (knights' estates) both being autocratic political communities and commercial agricultural enterprises. Starting from the structural similarity of political autocracy and economic acquisitiveness on which both the plantations and Ritterguter were based, Bowman shows just how and why his two landed elites of agrarian capitalists are comparable. He then uses the converging lines of comparison to screen out and set in relief the crucial political and cultural differences that are the keys to explaining the contrasting behaviour of these two elites during the major nineteenth century crises that confronted them - the revolutionay crisis of 1848 - 49 in Germany and the secession crisis of 1860 - 61 in the U.S.
Reviews / Votes
William L Barney of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, a leading authority on the antebellum South and secession said he was "enormously impressed with the depth and range of the research" in the book. He praises Bowman for the "care and precision with which [he] presents the case for comparative history and elineates his understanding of such ideologically explosive issues as modernization, class and capitalism" and finds Bowman's conclusion to be "judicious and well-documented." this is comparative history of the best sort ... Combining innovative verve and simple good sense, it is considerably more sophisticated than the tired old 'compare and contrast' approach ... It will ... prompt fruitful reflection among newcomers and specialists in both fields. * James Retallack, The University of Toronto, German History, Vol. 14, No. 1, '96 *More details
Language
English
Place of publication
New York
United States
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Illustrations
2 halftones, 2 maps
Dimensions
Height: 235 mm
Width: 157 mm
Thickness: 27 mm
Weight
760 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-19-505281-7 (9780195052817)
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Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions

E-Book
04/1993
1st Edition
OUP eBook
€133.99
Available for download
Person
Author
Assistant Professor of HistoryAssistant Professor of History, University of Texas, Austin