A Sphinx on the American Land: the Nineteenth-Century South in Comparative Perspective.

A Sphinx on the American Land: The Nineteenth-Century South in Comparative Perspective. By Peter Kolchin. The Walter Lynwood Fleming Lectures in Southern History. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2003. Pp. xii, 124. $22.95, ISBN 0-8071-2866-X.)

Peter Kolchin's new foray into comparative history makes a distinguished addition to a distinguished series. In it he justifies continuing to explore the history of a region that "is increasingly central to the study of American history in general" (p. 2). The book is thus both a primer in comparative analysis and a contribution to the historiography and history of the South. On each count, Kolchin succeeds admirably in his purpose. An introduction and afterword frame three substantive chapters that reveal different comparative possibilities. Kolchin is anxious not to force comparative history into a rigid mold. Underlying his thinking is the belief that comparison of one sort or another lies at the core of all historical investigation and judgment; unarticulated, it becomes a source of "confusion and historical disagreement" (p. 116).

Kolchin's three routes to presenting a comparative approach to the region's past involve, first, investigating the nineteenth-century South in relation to the North, or the "un-South" (p. 4). Treading some familiar historiographical ground, his review of the debates surrounding the parallel development of the contending regions is still consistently refreshing. He notes, for example, that foreign observers were often struck by the differences between North and South and argues that, Fogel and Engerman notwithstanding, there were objective reasons to support that view. Kolchin explains, "Indeed, virtually every index of economic modernization other than per-capita growth--from urbanization and industrialization to mechanization, scientific endeavor, and education-indicated what contemporaries recognized: the antebellum South was lagging further and further behind the North" (pp. 26-27). With the Confederacy defeated and slavery abolished, white southerners quickly reclothed themselves in American garments, an identity that, in truth, they had never shed. In the postwar era southerners forged a stronger sense of distinctiveness by differentiating between still-despised Yankees on the one hand and true Americans, northern and southern, on the other.

The second comparative context addresses internal variation--"many Souths" (p. 4). To local and subregional diversity, Kolchin adds change over time, usefully pleading for more studies that compare particular social, economic, or political forms across different periods. The South has also been a land of many groups, all vying for attention as southerners but often exhibiting markedly contrasting, even conflicting histories. Kolchin notes how recent scholars have been more sensitive than their predecessors to this landscape of diverse groups, and he reminds us how attention to categories such as gender and, less familiarly, age can help recast the dominant narrative. Interested in how comparative approaches help us better grasp questions of southern identity, past and present, he concludes this discussion by revisiting debates about emancipation and Reconstruction. His message is not directed solely at professional historians, however, and he has clear advice for the modern defenders of southern tradition and "heritage." "In that there have been many Souths, current-day southerners intent on celebrating their past must choose, on a continuing basis, which of these many Souths to embrace," he insists (p. 72).

Kolchin's final excursion takes the comparative road beyond America's borders and draws us again to the testing grounds of the Confederate and emancipation experiences. Briefly comparing the former with that of Soviet nation-building, he observes that southern slavery provided "a poor cornerstone on which to build national commitment at home or national support abroad" (p. 92). Finally, Kolchin shares some of his current research into emancipation in the nineteenth-century South and Russia. He describes the striking contrasts in the emancipation process in the two societies and is intrigued as to how the outcomes were nonetheless similar. In providing some tentative answers, Kolchin, here as elsewhere in this engaging volume, reveals himself to be not only a shrewd practitioner of the comparativist's art but also a historian of unusual perceptiveness and accessibility.

MARTIN CRAWFORD

Keele University