Books
Masters of Small Worlds: Yeoman Households, Gender Relations, & the Political Culture of the Antebellum South Carolina Low Country
Oxford University Press | 1995 | Buy it at Seminary Co-op or your local bookstore
In this innovative study of the South Carolina Low Country, author Stephanie McCurry explores the place of the yeomanry in plantation society—the complex web of domestic and public relations within which they were enmeshed, and the contradictory politics of slave society by which that class of small farmers extracted the privileges of masterhood from the region's powerful planters. Insisting on the centrality of women as historical actors and gender as a category of analysis, this work shows how the fateful political choices made by the low-country yeomanry were rooted in the politics of the household, particularly in the customary relations of power male heads of independent households assumed over their dependents, whether slaves or free women and children. Such masterly prerogatives, practiced in the domestic sphere and redeemed in the public, explain the yeomanry's deep commitment to slavery and, ultimately, their ardent embrace of secession.
By placing the yeomanry in the center of the drama, McCurry offers a significant reinterpretation of this volatile society on the road to Civil War. Through careful and creative use of a wide variety of archival sources, she brings vividly to life the small worlds of yeoman households, and the larger world of the South Carolina Low Country, the plantation South, and nineteenth-century America.
Awards
Francis Butler Simkins Award for the Best First Book in Southern History, Southern Historical Association, 1997
Charles S. Sydnor Award for the outstanding book published in Southern History, Southern Historical Association, 1996
Franklin Prize for the Best Book in American Studies, American Studies Association, 1996
Reviews
“[Masters of Small Worlds] ... is of interest not only for the local matter of South Carolina, but as one test of whether ‘race, class, and gender’ can ... make a history and not just a battlecry ... McCurry offers an abundance of insight, information and anecdote. She is a gifted historian, engaging large questions.”
“Will surely enrich the debate over its role in the antebellum South for some time to come.”
“McCurry has written an imaginative and fascinating interpretation of antebellum politics in the South Carolina lowcountry ... McCurry’s arguments, asserted in bold and uncompromising prose, are unique, highly revisionary, and very much her own.”
“[A] well-conceived, well-crafted volume that belongs on the shelf of every serious student of the American South. Those who read [the book] will be richly rewarded with a broader, deeper understanding of the world of southern yeomen.”
“Masters of Small Worlds is social history at its best, opening up new conceptual ground through an exhaustive reading of archival sources.”
“Elegantly written and exhaustively researched, this brilliant book transforms the way we think about the Old South.”
“Masters of Small Worlds is a strikingly original work, one which manages to say important new things about subjects that have attracted the attention of generations of scholars—the foundations of proslavery thought and the road to the Civil War. It is difficult to think of a work of American history that more successfully integrates the ‘public’ and ‘private’ realms of life, or that demonstrates more persuasively the centrality of gender as a category for understanding American political thought.”
“[A] well-researched and detailed study ... Masters of Small Worlds is an extremely valuable work ... [A] bold and convincing history ... that will clearly be required reading for Southern historians, women’s historians, and American social historians.”
“The subtlety and texture of her interpretations offer a model for future studies of this class elsewhere in the antebellem South.”
“This is a bold thesis, and it is vigorously argued. There is much to admire in this book: the clarity of the writing, the depth of research in some sources, and the attempt to integrate gender into political history.”
“This is an important, potentially pathbreaking book...[F]ascinating and provocative...[E]xciting, original, and intricate...No other historian has analyzed the links between public and private life so fully.”
“An important book that greatly enriches our understanding of households, religion, and political culture and their relationship to one another in the antebellum South. Stephanie McCurry’s carefully researched and gracefully written volume is certain to win well-deserved praise from fellow historians in her field.”
