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Article: The Origins of Southern Sharecropping.
- Article from:
- Southern Economic Journal
- Article date:
- April 1, 1995
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1995 Southern Economic Association. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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In his wonderfully readable qualitative examination of the transition of southern agriculture in a few years succeeding the Civil War, Edward Royce attempts to explain why sharecropping arose as the dominant institutional arrangement between freedmen and landowners. His sociological study considering how class conflict between former slaves and former planters was resolved to neither group's total satisfaction adds a useful, though not entirely new, dynamic dimension to an often studied historical situation; by itself, however, it raises as many questions as it answers.
Royce begins by distinguishing his study from those that view sharecropping either as (1) the ...