Competition and Coercion: Blacks in the American Economy 1865-1914Competition and Coercion: Blacks in the American economy, 1865-1914 is a reinterpretation of black economic history in the half-century after Emancipation. Its central theme is that economic competition and racial coercion jointly determined the material condition of the blacks. The book identifies a number of competitive processes that played important roles in protecting blacks from the racial coercion to which they were peculiarly vulnerable. It also documents the substantial economic gains realized by the black population between 1865 and 1914. Professor Higgs's account is iconoclastic. It seeks to reorganize the present conceptualization of the period and to redirect future study of black economic history in the post-Emancipation period. It raises new questions and suggests new answers to old questions, asserting that some of the old questions are misleadingly framed or not worth pursuing at all. |
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Contents
Approaching the facts | 3 |
Economic development with racial discrimination | 9 |
Fertility mortality and natural increase | 15 |
Regional distribution of the population | 24 |
Urbanrural distribution of the population | 32 |
The transition from slavery to a free labor market | 38 |
The new agricultural credit system | 55 |
Freedom and necessity | 61 |
Budgets | 102 |
Housing | 108 |
Improvements in the level of living | 117 |
What was not accomplished? | 123 |
Vicious circles? | 128 |
Black participation in the merchant class | 142 |
| 175 | |
| 205 | |
Other editions - View all
Competition and Coercion: Blacks in the American Economy 1865-1914 Robert Higgs Limited preview - 1977 |
Common terms and phrases
39th Congress acreage acres Agricultural Labor Alabama American Economic Association Atlanta average black farmers black income black population black tenants black workers Bulletin Census child-woman ratio cities colored competition cotton crop DeBow's Review decline Department of Agriculture discriminatory earnings emancipation employers employment estimate evidence farm laborers fertility fixed-rent freedmen Freedmen's Bureau George Henry White Georgia growth half century housing ibid idem income per capita increase investment labor market landlords level of living Mary White Ovington ment merchant migration Mississippi mortality Negro American Family Negro Population nonagricultural Nordhoff North number of black occupations opportunities owners passim peonage percent period Philadelphia Negro plantations planters probably productive race racial differences racial discrimination Reconstruction relatively rent Report rural blacks share share-rent skilled slave slavery South Carolina Southern Agriculture Table tion U.S. Bureau U.S. Department U.S. Industrial Commission variables W. E. B. Du Bois Washington York
Bibliographic information
| Title | Competition and Coercion: Blacks in the American Economy 1865-1914 Volume 163 of Hoover press publications |
| Author | Robert Higgs |
| Edition | illustrated, reprint |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press, 2008 |
| ISBN | 0521088402, 9780521088404 |
| Length | 220 pages |
| Subjects | › › Business & Economics / Economic Conditions Business & Economics / Economic History History / Europe / Great Britain History / United States / General Social Science / Ethnic Studies / African American Studies |
| Export Citation | BiBTeX EndNote RefMan |