Masters and Lords Mid-19th-Century U.S. Planters and Prussian Junkers [Hardcover]

Among the regional landed elites in the Western World of the mid-1800s, the two most formidable were the owners of slave plantations in the Southern states of the U.S. and the proprietors of manorial estates in the provinces of Prussian East Elbia.Masters and Lordssurveys the economic, social, and political histories of the two classes from the seventeenth and sixteenth centuries respectively, and pays particular attention to planters during the secession crisis of 1860-61 and to Junkers during the revolutionary crisis of 1848-49. In the process, Bowman grapples with such ambiguous and contentious concepts as capitalism, conservatism, and paternalism. Despite very different labor systems, antebellum planters and contemporaneous Junkers alike presided over landed estates that functioned as both autocratic political communities and agricultural enterprises exporting valuable commodities to industrializing England. This book also highlights important geographic, demographic, and political contrasts between the South and East Elbia as regional societies. Bowman concludes that the crucial distinction between the two landed elites is to be found in the Junkers' militarist and estatist monarchism versus the planters' libertarian but racist republicanism.

Buttressed by impressive research in both American and German sources, filtered through an eclectic variety of theoretical perspectives, this is a long-awaited book of big arguments and broad comparisons. If it does not always persuade, it challenges easy assumptions, transforms debate, and broadens our historical vision on virtually every page....Even those unconvinced by [Bowman's] claims will be impressed by the full and evenhanded treatment he accords contrary views....Masters and Lordsis a refreshing, intelligent, provocative study all nineteenth-century southern and German historians will want to examine. --Georgia Historical Quarterly

Thoroughly researched, well-writtelˆ