Development of the cotton economy in the South 1776-1860 Essay

Development of the cotton economy in the South 1776-1860 - Essay Example The Northern merchants reaped huge gains from cotton trade as they were engaged in buying cotton from farmers and exporting it to England in exchange for manufactured products. According to Seavoy (184), the trade business in North American states was actually an international affair as those in the North would export to foreign markets the cotton they had bought from the southern farmers. The economic success for both the north and south lay on the support of the southern slaves, which saw the emergence of capitalism, slavery/ forced labor and the civil war. This paper looks at the impacts of cotton farming and the long term effects it had on the American history. Development of the cotton economy in the South The economy of North America and South America differed in that the northerners chose manufacturing system while the southerners chose landowning aristocracy. The aristocratic federal system allowed a high degree of independence as labor was drawn from various fronts. Demand f or labor rose sharply in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in both North and South America. Northern immigrants came from Europe and were excellently absorbed into society while Southern immigrants came from Africa and they were not absorbed. ... They were sold to Southern American planters. Instead of paying the immigrants themselves, planters in the South paid the ship captains. Due to capitalism, the planters overworked the immigrants in order to pay higher prices to ship captains. Southern immigrants as well as their children became slaves for their entire lives. The slaves were increasingly used to grow cotton in the South. Cotton accounted for fifty percent of all American exports and the South generated more than fifty percent of the global supply of cotton in 1840. This enormous production, as Walton and Rockoff, (p 125) and say held many foreign countries in partial repression. By then, Britain was the leader in terms of industrial power, and its most pertinent manufacture was cotton cloth. Southerners repressed nations like Britain as they perfectly knew that Britain was attached to them mostly by raw cotton. This dependence gave them an invigorating sense of power. The South grew rapidly as a result of cotton and d iversified agriculture. The rapacious craving for cotton in Lancashire matched the increasing production in the South driven by vitality of slave institutions and availability of cotton growing land. The immorality of enslaving Africans has continuously haunted American economic history. African enslavement became a prime factor in antebellum politics and a pertinent aspect in the civil war. Even today, the role of blacks in American history and economy persists. The antebellum Southern encounter was largely as a result of peculiar slavery institution. Cotton economy restrains industrialization in the south Cotton economy in the South