Seth Rockman's latest book, Plantation Goods: A Material History of American Slavery (University of Chicago Press, 2024) has been named a Pulitzer Prize finalist in History.
By following the stories of material objects, such as shoes made by Massachusetts farm women that found their way to the feet of a Mississippi slave, Rockman reveals a national economy organized by slavery—a slavery that outsourced the production of its supplies to the North, and a North that outsourced its slavery to the South.
Pulitzer describes the book as "An eye-opening rethinking of nineteenth-century American history that reveals the interdependence of the Northern industrial economy and Southern slave labor." The publication offers a layered analysis of the manufacture and movement of tools and other everyday products between the North and South–from New England businesses to Southern planters and their enslaved workers–and how they created a shared economy.
Congratulations, Seth Rockman!
Learn more about Plantation Goods