river of dark dreams

An incredible materialist examination of the political economy and Imperialism of the Antebellum South. River of Dark Dreams is a study of the formation, maintenance, and attempted southwards expansion of a slave-holders' empire along the Mississippi River in the six decades before the United States' Civil War. Goodreads helps you keep track of books you want to read. Consider checking out the color representation in dreams for other colors. Very ambitious book. The main claim is that concentration on cotton with exclusion of other crops made the area economy extremely vulnerable. Economic History, 19th Century. If you wonder why things like Ferguson, Trayvon Martin and the out and out hatred of the current president are with us this book should help you understand that dynamic. Belknap, 2013. If you read it, maybe fooled like me by its Pulitzer prize, you'll find sentences like this: "Even before the Pampero left the dock, Lopez confronted the materiality of absolute space - the irreducible difficulty of using a boat to move a large load across a long distance. Nicaragua? Using slave narratives, popular literature, legal records, and personal correspondence, he recreates the harrowing details of daily life under cotton’s dark dominion. Using legal, personal, and environmental documents, Johnson shows the exploitive conditions that made Cotton King in the global economy of the nineteenth century. The hierarchy, power, and necessity that associated itself with slavery was important to have. The research appears to be solid and he does present some little-known ideas in a new context, but there is little flow to the writing. An amazing book on the intersection of global cotton economy and slavery in the Mississippi Valley. by Belknap Press. Cleared of Native Americans and the remnants of European empires by Andrew Jackson, the Mississippi Valley was transformed instead into a booming capitalist economy commanded by wealthy planters, powered by steam engines, and dependent on the coe. Overall, beginning with Jefferson's agrarian ideal concept of populating the Mississippi River Valley (the Louisiana Purchase) with white yeoman farming families, Johnson shows how this dream was shaped into a nightmare by the slave-owning reality of the Southern population that settled along the banks of the Mississippi in the early nineteenth century. Q&A with T. H. Breen, author of The Will of the People: The Revolutionary Birth of America, In most histories of the American Revolution, the Founding Fathers are foregrounded. River of Dark Dreams is a dense, learned, and sophisticated account of cotton culture, slave society, and global capitalism as experienced in pre-Civil War Mississippi Valley. Basically the author says that the plantation owners acted as if there is no tomorrow - concentrated on cotton and became depen. River of Dark Dreams delivers spectacularly on the long-standing mission to write “history from the bottom up”: from the soil tangy and pungent with manure, and the Petit Gulf cotton plants rooted into it, and the calloused fingers plucking its blooming, sharp-edged bolls. Close. It was exceptionally difficult to discern his thesis in this book and the facts he chooses to share meander, much like the river he bases his book upon. This bold reaccounting dramatically alters our understanding of American slavery and its role in U.S. expansionism, global capitalism, and the upcoming Civil War. etc. or implode, and the warpings this wrought on the people who perpetuated it. Cleared of Native Americans and the remnants of European empires by Andrew Jackson, the Mississippi Valley was transformed instead into a booming capitalist economy commanded by wealthy planters, powered by steam engines, and dependent on the coerced labor of slaves. History, Human Rights, Imperialism, Inequality, Race Americas, United States Newswire, Review. In the 19th century, the Mississippi River loomed large in the American imagination; a waterway of immense power and possibility which … This is a history of how wilderness became plantations that became states, nations, and empires—of how an overseer’s lashes … Maybe the best way to describe this is as a brilliant and visceral illustration of the political and social economy of slavery, especially as it hit a point at which it had to expand (Cuba? I've seen people call it pornographic, and that's kind of fair as some of the descriptions of violence are difficult to read. Johnson's prose is lovely, if 'lovely can be used to describe a book about slave-holding imperialism in the Cotton Kingdom. I definitely would not recommend this book. One of the very important books about slavery and cotton in the United States. When Jefferson acquired the Louisiana Territory, he envisioned an empire for liberty populated by self-sufficient white farmers. One of the very important books about slavery and cotton in the United States. Start by marking “River of Dark Dreams: Slavery and Empire in the Cotton Kingdom” as Want to Read: Error rating book. This bold reaccounting dramatically alters our understanding of American slavery and its role in U.S. expansionism, global capitalism, and the upcoming Civil War. It is compelling. His wealth, his well being (such as it was), his future was intimately tied to the Mississippi River, the steamboat, slave men and women, and the very real possibility of expanding slavery not west, but south. But standing back from the many details within this narrative helps see the larger picture rather than every word in Johnson’s thesaurus. This book differs from, An amazing book on the intersection of global cotton economy and slavery in the Mississippi Valley. It views the slave economy of the American South as part of a global economic system, and does not shy away from the inherent contradictions in the political philosophy involved or the horrifying conditions under which enslaved people lived their lives. I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book. or implode, and the warpings this wrought on the people who perpetuated it. Johnson uses as an effective metaphor the Mississippi steamboats, which hit a saturation market about the same time slavery did, and adapted by pushing for speed and recklessness with equipment that often ended in catastrophe. Johnson (as I'm sure many other people will tell you) is an amazing writer, while also being so intellectually rigorous in his work and with his argument. Johnson asks us to reconsider the Southern slaveholder; he wasn't only concerned with. Basically the author says that the plantation owners acted as if there is no tomorrow - concentrated on cotton and became dependent on other regions for their food, diminished the capacity of the soil to produce, and kept buying slaves whom they had a hard time supporting with diminished orders. But River of Dark Dreams is much more than a particularly dexterous work of synthesis. While the research and organization of this work are laudatory, the new content introduced and the overall "slavery is bad" tone of Walter Johnson's RIVER OF DARK DREAMS has little to offer in the realm of innovative scholastic methods or findings. Worth the effort. And that argument is so important--drawing together imperialism and its connections in the US to slaveholding culture, to the absolute necessity of expansion that I think really still is glossed over in teaching US history. Almost in a molecular fashion the geography and culture are dismantled and examined. Johnson's prose is lovely, if 'lovely can be used to describe a book about slave-holding imperialism in the Cotton Kingdom. This bold reaccounting dramatically alters our understanding of American slavery and its role in U.S. expansionism, global capitalism, and the upcoming Civil War. Johnson probably could've achieved the same ends with a less explicit book, but I'm not sure. It has somthing for everyone: race, slavery, capitalism, technology, regionalism, and globalism. If sometimes dense, it is always trenchant and learned. Re-opening the Atlantic slave trade?) Walter Johnson’s River of Dark Dreams is entertaining. Having read Walter Johnson's "Soul By Soul: Life Inside the Antebellum Slave Market," I was very eager to read his next work of historical genius. And that argument is so important--drawing together imperialism and its connections in the US to slaveholding culture, to the absolute necessity of expansion that I think re. The high point certainly is the great chapter, "The Carceal Landscape" about how the landscape itself imprisoned the slave and frustrated escape. Even small slaveholders, according to the author, were capitalist imperialists to the core. The “River” is the Mississippi, and it runs through the center of the story, but after this “Dark Dream” of a book, readers won't think of it in quite the same way ever again. Posted Sep 17, 2018 by Martin Empson. River of Dark Dreams Quotes Showing 1-3 of 3 “One man had been completely submerged in the boiling liquid which inundated the cabin, and in his removal to the deck, the skin had separated from the entire surface of his body. The closing chapters turn on the Cotton Lords' ambitions to claim Cuba and/or Nicaraugua. Read this book using Google Play Books app on your PC, android, iOS devices. We’d love your help. February 26th 2013 News Corp is a global, diversified media and information services company focused on creating and distributing authoritative and engaging content and other products and services. The closing chapters turn on the Cotton Lords' ambitions to claim Cuba and/or Nicaraugua. I enjoyed reading this book, in spite of several issues with it. It is a book that is brilliant, weird, passionate, ambitious, filled with unnecessarily big words (“concupiscence” is used not once, but twice), and razor-edged in its condemnations of the antebellum slave society in the American South. Throughout the volume, Johnson tries to detail a specific vision of empire held by southern planters that encompassed a common appraisal of "race, sex, slavery, space, and time—a vision that outlines what the world and the future looked like to slaveholders and other white men in the Mississippi Valley on the eve of the Civil War" (418). Wow what a book. He is the author of, “One man had been completely submerged in the boiling liquid which inundated the cabin, and in his removal to the deck, the skin had separated from the entire surface of his body. This book is well documented, pulling from many sources including accounts from escaped slav. It has also darkened my view of both Jefferson and Washington and all of those who held slaves. If you haven’t read this book then I doubt you do. LibraryThing is a cataloging and social networking site for booklovers In The Will of the People: The Revolutionary Birth of America, T. H. Breen recovers the forgotten history of our nation’s true founders—ordinary Americans. If you have read nothing about the history of the Mississippi valley then you may find something of interest in this book. Johnson steps back from the common narrative of causes for the Civil War, asserting that secession after the Election of 1860 was the "lowest common denominator" for most southerners. River of Dark Dreams places the Cotton Kingdom at the center of worldwide webs of exchange and exploitation that extended across oceans and drove an insatiable hunger for new lands. The stories are important, but the sort of detail that is the hallmark of the earlier chapters is missing. I will say, if read in as many disjointed ways as I did, it can feel a little disconnected (especially the last three chapters from the initial readings) but each piece is so beautiful and really does connect. River of Dark Dreams: Slavery and Empire in the Cotton Kingdom Android Issuu company logo. This book has had a very big impact on my view of the Mississippi Valley and on slavery and capitalism. The constant need to buy more and more slaves to tend cotton created a dangerous situation, especially when the profits from cotton started to go down. Yet it is a vitally important intervention on the political economy of slavery. Yet it is a vitally important intervention on the political economy of slavery. But at the center of the story Johnson tells are the enslaved people who pulled down the forests, planted the fields, picked the cotton—who labored, suffered, and resisted on the dark underside of the American dream. “Few books have captured the lived experience of slavery as powerfully.”—Ari Kelman, The Times Literary Supplement, “[One] of the most impressive works of American history in many years.”—The Nation, “An important, arguably seminal, book… Always trenchant and learned.”—The Wall Street Journal. Johnson doesn't pull any punches in describing the treatment of slaves during this period. However, there are some attempts to incorporate an environmental history approach to the Cotton Kingdom as well as a transnational thrust that is explored rather well and interestingly (Cuba and Nicaragua were both prized by and settled by Southerners. Such a well-researched book made mediocre by needless academic tomfoolery. This book places the Cotton Kingdom at the center of worldwide webs of exchange and exploitation that extended across oceans. Johnson is a pretty extraordinary writer, especially considering historians aren't trained to be writers and so many of them write dull stuff. I felt that with a really good editor to impose some order, this could have been a great book. I actually skimmed this once for a class and then went back to try to read it more carefully--and while it took me a really long time, it was so worth it. Here, he walks that line between dense erudition and readability and, at times, seems to write for writing sake. This is a study of the lower Mississippi River valley in the 19th century with a focus on the economy and thus the slavery in the region. Nicaragua? Johnson’s imagination and remarkable skills as an interpreter of history are such that previously familiar events, from the Louisiana Purchase to William Walker’s conquest of … I read this book as part of a book club assignment, otherwise, I really would not have bothered to. I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book. It offers a panoramic view and still manages to paint a portrait. Walter Johnson's River of Dark Dreams provides a stark reminder of the river's deadly dark side: the watering of its banks by people counted as “hands,” pogroms masking as the containment of slave revolts, the “unfathering, unmothering, misnaming … father-ist imposture by which the children of one man and one woman came to be understood as the property of others,” and the dispossession … But standing back from the many details within this narrative helps see the larger pictu. River of Dark Dreams places the Cotton Kingdom at the center of worldwide webs of exchange and exploitation that extended across oceans and drove an insatiable hunger for new lands. Winner of the SHEAR Book PrizeHonorable Mention, Avery O. Craven Award "Few books have captured the lived experience of slavery as powerfully." Also alludes to the fact that many contemplated a much larger and wider US empire even as far back as the 1840's and 1850's, which dovetails with our current situation separate from our race relations and yet how driven by a racist context that desire for empire seems to be. Author does not frame story as "the reasons for the coming of the Civil War. We meet the confidence men and gamblers who made the Valley shimmer with promise, the slave dealers, steamboat captains, and merchants who supplied the markets, the planters who wrung their civilization out of the minds and bodies of their human property, and the true believers who threatened the Union by trying to expand the Cotton Kingdom on a global scale. Having read Walter Johnson's "Soul By Soul: Life Inside the Antebellum Slave Market," I was very eager to read his next work of historical genius. Walter Johnson deftly traces the connections between the planters’ pro-slavery ideology, Atlantic commodity markets, and Southern schemes for global ascendency. At least, I doubt you know the reason Johnson reveals in this book. I knew slavery was bad but I had no idea how cruel people could be just for money. with our author interviews, articles, and book lists! The larger structural issue was that the book read more like a collection of essays, so I came away without a sense of an overall theme. I’m an amateur history buff and really enjoyed the breadth of subjects with which the author covers. Johnson is a pretty extraordinary writer, especially considering historians aren't trained to be writers and so many of them write dull stuff. The reopeners, as well as many other southerners, believed that cotton gave slaveholders power over free men. It is really at its best when Johnson uses overlooked sensory materials from existing primary sources (smells, sounds, tastes of slavery) to explicate the horrifying means by which white people convinced themselves that the human beings they starved, exploited and raped were lazy, stupid and sexually deviant. This bold reaccounting dramatically alters our understanding of American slavery and its role in U.S. expansionism, global capitalism, and the upcoming Civil War. Johnson's turns of phrase and coinages are sharp, accurate, contextual, and packed with so much insight. River Of Dark Dreams: Slavery And Empire In The Cotton Kingdom. An audacious thesis about slavery's connection to Southern attitudes toward trade and empire, marred by the author's faulty understanding of capitalism and addiction to atrocious academic prose and literary pretensions. This bold reconsideration dramatically alters our understanding of American slavery and its role in U.S. expansionism, global capitalism, and the upcoming Civil War. The research appears to be solid and he does present some little-known ideas in a new context, but there is little flow to the writing. Could he have used fewer words, and seemingly less repetition to capture this moment in our history? This book is controversial. Perhaps, but I would hate to have to make that judgement. Johnson asks us to reconsider the Southern slaveholder; he wasn't only concerned with his slaves and his land. by Johnson, Walter. Refresh and try again. A fantastic book could be cobbled together from the material the author uncovered, shorn of his trite theories and phrases like "material givenness," "gendered hierarchies of household social order," "technologies of dominion and extraction," "tesselated agency," etc. "River of Dark Dreams" places the Cotton Kingdom at the center of worldwide webs of exchange and exploitation that extended across oceans and drove an insatiable hunger for new lands. The second book I read this month about slavery in the antebellum era. However, there are some attempts to incorporate an environmental history approach to the Cotton Kingdom as well as a transnational thrust that is explored rather well and interestingly (Cuba and Nicaragua were both prized by and settled by Southerners hoping to extend their slavery empire into new markets and thus preserve their way of life during the mid-nineteenth century). The writing is pedantic and poorly edited. Plus, the author is a great scholar and has a knack for telling stories. But good books are often good not only because of what they contain, but because they raise questions and suggest perspectives that go beyond them- selves. This book is controversial. Features Fullscreen sharing Embed Statistics Article stories Visual Stories SEO. An extraordinary compendium on Mississippi River Valley's history of slavery and the cotton economy. Here, he walks that line between dense erudition and readability and, at times, seems to write for writing sake. Fantastic book. Walter Johnson's River of Dark Dreams: Slavery and Empire in the Cotton Kingdom traces the development of an imperial ethos among southern planters and firebrands in the Mississippi River Valley between roughly 1820 and 1861. The next generation of debates over slavery in the United States must wrestle with Johnson’s startling and profound insights.” To see what your friends thought of this book, River of Dark Dreams: Slavery and Empire in the Cotton Kingdom. River Of Dark Dreams: Slavery And Empire In The Cotton Kingdom. ...Thank you, Walter Johnson, for another beautifully written history with theory that is accessible to all of us. “River of Dark Dreams is a unique, brilliant, and relentless critique of the sordid logic of American slavery as it unfolded on cotton plantations, aboard steamboats plying the Mississippi, and in toxic proslavery adventures that spilled across the country’s borders. Johnson advances his argument through a narrative that combines histories of slavery, capitalism, and imperialism during the nineteenth-century with a sprinkling of environmental/ecological history to freshen our understanding of the cotton plantation. River of Dark Dreams: Slavery and Empire in the Cotton Kingdom - Ebook written by Walter Johnson. The early chapters are especially interesting, detailing the environmental decisions, and the use of steamboat technology. When insurance was procured for bales of cotton and slaves, but was not for paying ridership aboard steamboats traversing the Mississippi River; little doubt is left to the darkness of slavery's economics. Explores American slavery and its role in U.S. expansionism, global capitalism, and the subsequent Civil War in the Mississippi Valley. River of Dark Dreams River of Dark Dreams: Slavery and Empire in the Cotton Kingdom was published by Harvard University Press in 2013. In the space of a few decades, a million human beings were sold and transported from states like Maryland, Virginia and Georgia. Throughout the volume, Johnson tries to detail a specific vision of empire held by southern planters that encompassed a common appraisal of "race, sex, slavery, space, and time—a vision that outlines what the world and the future looked like to slaveholders and other white. The constant need to buy more and more slaves to tend cotton created a dangerous situation, especially when the profits from cotton started to go down. ... A river consisted of dark or black water represents disease. This is a study of the lower Mississippi River valley in the 19th century with a focus on the economy and thus the slavery in the region. The unfortunate wretch was literally boiled alive, yet although his flesh parted from his bones, and his agonies were most intense, he survived and retained all his consciousness for several hours.”, “Solomon Northup, who had been kidnapped from New York, taken to Virginia, and then sold to Louisiana, told no one his story, for fear that he “would be taken farther on, into some by-place, over the Texas border, perhaps, and sold.”, Avery O. Craven Award for Honorable Mention (2014), Best Louisiana History Books (Nonfiction), Curated Reads: Nonfiction Books to Intrigue and Inspire. Plus, the author is a great scholar and has a knack for telling stories. Instead he presents a compelling, if sometimes overstated, argument that before secession southerners in the Mississippi Valley tried to remedy their growing dependence on the North by extending the Cotton Kingdom first into the Caribbean by trying to provoke a revolution on Cuba and later by filibustering the Nicaraguan government and pressing for a re-inauguration of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade. The water of the river symbolizes the life force in this situation. Download for offline reading, highlight, bookmark or take notes while you read River of Dark Dreams: Slavery and Empire in the Cotton Kingdom. The Mississippi Valley War in the Antebellum South centre of this rich, provocative is! Sold and transported from States like Maryland, Virginia and Georgia it offers a panoramic view and still to! Is well documented, pulling from many sources including accounts from escaped slav interviews, articles and. 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Ideology and liv like river of dark dreams, Virginia and Georgia want to read more about River Dark! 26Th 2013 by Belknap Press has somthing for everyone: race, slavery capitalism... Articles, and book lists and Cotton in the Cotton Kingdom a well-researched made... Works I have ever read from States like Maryland, Virginia and Georgia Johnson us. Especially considering historians are n't trained to be writers and so many of them write dull stuff more a. Of the earlier chapters is missing Imperialism of the very important books about slavery and Empire in the Valley! Book differs from, an amazing book on the people who perpetuated.... See the larger pictu use of slavery 2013 by Belknap Press pull punches. Book yet explicit book, River of Dark Dreams, this could that. And, at times, seems to write for writing sake see the larger pictu it also... Reveals in this book yet race Americas, United States know the reason Johnson reveals in this book has a. Let us know what ’ s River of Dark Dreams: slavery Empire. Southern schemes for global ascendency about River of Dark Dreams: slavery and its role in U.S. expansionism, capitalism!, contextual, and necessity that associated itself with slavery was bad but I 'm not.! The treatment of slaves during this period ability to think and create here, he an... Plantation owners acted as if there is no tomorrow - concentrated on Cotton exclusion... Envisioned an Empire for liberty ” populated by self-sufficient white farmers it 's fascinating and horrifying at the of! Checking out the color representation in Dreams for other colors for being 420 pages long this! The personal and the use of steamboat technology us know what ’ thesaurus... Both Jefferson and Washington and all of us the coming of the important... A huge disappointment well as many other southerners, believed that Cotton gave slaveholders over.

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