Synopses & Reviews
Professor Majewski compares Virginia and Pennsylvania to explain how slavery undermined the development of the southern economy. In the beginning of the nineteenth century, residents in each state financed transportation improvements to raise land values and spur commercial growth. However, by the 1830s, Philadelphia capitalists began financing Pennsylvania's railroad network, building integrated systems that reached the Midwest. Virginia's railroads remained a collection of lines without western connections. The lack of a major city that could provide capital and traffic for large-scale railroads was the weakness of Virginia's slave economy.
Review
"Majewski successfully endeavors to compare both support and investment in internal improvements in two counties, one in Virginia and one in Pennsylvania...fine, interesting work..." Choice"...intriguing and provocative...his book has set out an approach that many more comparative explorations could follow fruitfully." EH.NET, Thomas Weiss, University of Kansas"John Mejewski has written an important monograph that futhers our understanding of the economic difference between North and South on the eve of the Civil War. The book is carefully research, cogently argied, and well written." The Jrnl of Am His
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments; Introduction: Regional Development in Comparative Perspective; 1. Developmental corporations in a slave-labor society; 2. Developmental corporations in a free-labor society; 3. Railroads and local development; 4. The local politics of market development; 5. Urban capital and the superiority of Pennsylvania's transportation network; 6. Why Antebellum Virginians never developed a big city; Epilogue; Appendix; Bibliography; Index.