Project and content management for Contemporary Authors volumes
WORK TITLE: The Cotton Kings
WORK NOTES: with Barbara Hahn
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE: http://bruceebaker.com/
CITY: Newcastle upon Tyne, England
STATE:
COUNTRY: United Kingdom
NATIONALITY:
http://bruceebaker.com/curriculumvitae.htm * http://bruceebaker.com/biography.htm * https://www.amazon.com/Bruce-E.-Baker/e/B001JSDOIW
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Born in FL.
EDUCATION:Clemson University, B.A. (two), 1992; University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, M.A., 1995, Ph.D., 2003.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer and educator. York County Technical College, Rock Hill, SC, adjunct instructor, 1995-96; University of North Carolina, Charlotte, adjunct instructor, 1996; Trident Technical College, Charleston, SC, adjunct instructor, 1996-99; University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, teaching fellow, 2003; University of Wisconsin, Superior, instructor, 2004; University of London, England, lecturer, 2004-08, senior lecturer, 2008-13; Newcastle University, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, England, lecturer in modern American history, 2013—. Also worked as a freelance folklorist, 1995-98.
MEMBER:Association of British American Nineteenth Century Historians.
AWARDS:Andrew W. Mellon fellowship, 1999-2000; Dolores Zohrab Liebmann fellowship, 2000-03; Royal Holloway College Teaching Prize, University of London, 2006-07, 2011-12; grants from organizations, including RHUL Research Strategy Fund, Arts and Humanities Research Council, British Academy, and Southern Historical Association.
WRITINGS
Editor and author of introduction, The South at Work: Observations from 1904, by William Garrott Brown, University of South Carolina Press (Columbia, SC), 2014. Contributor to books and to journals, including Southern Cultures, Tennessee Historical Quarterly, American Nineteenth Century History, Journal of Southern History, American Historical Review, Florida Historical Quarterly, Journal of Ozarks Studies, and Labor History.
SIDELIGHTS
Bruce E. Baker is an American writer and educator based in Berwickshire, Scotland. He holds two bachelor’s degrees from Clemson University and both a master’s degree and a Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Baker has taught at the University of North Carolina’s Charlotte and Chapel Hill campuses, as well as at York County Technical College, Trident Technical College, the University of Wisconsin, Superior, and the University of London. In 2013, he joined Newcastle University, in England, as a lecturer in modern American history. Baker has also worked as a freelance folklorist. He has written articles and book reviews that have appeared in scholarly journals, including Southern Cultures, Tennessee Historical Quarterly, American Nineteenth Century History, Journal of Southern History, American Historical Review, Florida Historical Quarterly, Journal of Ozarks Studies, and Labor History.
What Reconstruction Meant and After Slavery
Baker is the author of What Reconstruction Meant: Historical Memory in the American South. In this volume, he examines the concept of social memory, focusing on its iterations in the southern region of the United States. Baker highlights the connections between social memory and oral tradition, and he explains how public and private spaces shape social memory. Many of the examples Baker cites are from South Carolina. He also mentions other southern states, including Georgia, North Carolina, and Virginia. Michael Kammen, a critic on the Southern Cultures Web site, suggested: “This well-researched volume makes a useful contribution to the field as well as to our understanding of southern culture.”
Baker collaborated with Brian Kelly to edit the 2014 volume After Slavery: Race, Labor, and Citizenship in the Reconstruction South. Contributors discuss the massive upheaval in the economy of the South after slavery was abolished. The region was forced to find a new way to structure its labor system, as well as its social order, infrastructure, and politics. The book’s contributors highlight the problems faced by the freed African Americans, including negotiating contracts and understanding their rights as American citizens. Among the authors of the essays in the volume are Gregory Downs, Erik Mathisen, James Illingworth, Michael Fitzgerald, Susan O’Donovan, Kelly, and Baker. Writing on H-Net: Humanities and Social Sciences Online, Amy French remarked: “Moving beyond a generalized study of the entire region to intensive localized studies, the ten essays span the South geographically, giving the reader snapshots into the various facets of freedpeople’s lives.” French continued: “Coeditors Baker and Kelly, along with the contributors, provide an informative study of labor history in the Reconstruction South. The essays show that the working-class narrative is key to a complete understanding of the remaking of the South. Raising provocative questions about black/white relations in the labor movement, workers’ responses to labor legislation, and the role of gender (especially conceptions of manhood), the work encourages additional analysis of laborers’ experiences. In sum, After Slavery is enlightening scholarship on the history of labor and citizenship in the post-emancipation era.”
The Cotton Kings
In The Cotton Kings: Capitalism and Corruption in Turn-of-the-Century New York and New Orleans, Baker and coauthor Barbara Hahn examine the New York Cotton Exchange (NYCE) and the New Orleans Cotton Exchange (NOCE). They explain that the key difference between the two was that the NYCE was bearish, while the NOCE was bullish. Baker and Hahn also discuss the significance of the Cotton Futures Act of 1914.
According to Elizabeth Brake, a reviewer in the Journal of Southern History: “The Cotton Kings argues the Cotton Futures Act adopted many of the practices of the victorious bulls.” Brake added: “This story demonstrates why the exchanges’ self-regulatory measures were insufficient to curb the negative effects of speculation. Baker and Hahn also demonstrate how price volatility whet the appetites of market actors, not to mention Congress, for government regulation of the cotton exchanges, culminating in the Cotton Futures Act of 1914.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Journal of Southern History, February, 2017, Elizabeth Brake, review of The Cotton Kings: Capitalism and Corruption in Turn-of-the-Century New York and New Orleans, p. 196.
ONLINE
Bruce E. Baker Home Page, http://bruceebaker.com (July 18, 2017).
H-Net: Humanities and Social Sciences Online, https://networks.h-net.org/ (August 1, 2014), Amy French, review of After Slavery: Race, Labor, and Citizenship in the Reconstruction South.
Newcastle University Web site, http://www.ncl.ac.uk/ (July 18, 2017), faculty profile.
Southern Cultures Online, http://www.southerncultures.org/ (December 22, 2012), Michael Kammen, review of What Reconstruction Meant: Historical Memory in the American South.*
I grew up in a cotton mill town in South Carolina, and I was always interested in the history and culture of the American South. I earned an MA in folklore and a PhD in history at the University of South Carolina, and in 2004 I moved to England to teach history. I now live in the Scottish Borders with my family. I have written on a number of topics relating to the South between the Civil War and the middle of the twentieth century.
Where I'm From & Where I've Been
My family roots are in Michigan, Kentucky, and Missouri, though I was born in Florida. Later, we moved to South Carolina, and I grew up in Easley just as the region's textile industry was beginning to collapse. My first two years at Clemson University, I studied electrical engineering, but I switched to English and philosophy. Then I earned an M.A. in folklore at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, later returning to study for a Ph.D. in history there. Along the way, I have lived in Rock Hill (SC), Charleston (SC), Pine Ridge (KY), Superior (WI), the western exurbs of London, and Northumberland. I am now settled once and for all (I think) in Berwickshire in southern Scotland. Along with history, I have a longstanding passion for music, especially the traditional music of the South and of Ireland and Scotland, though I have also gotten quite interested in Gypsy music from the Balkans in the past few years.
Curriculum Vitae
Bruce E. Baker
School of History, Classics and Archaeology
Armstrong Building
Newcastle University
Newcastle upon Tyne
NE1 7RU
UNITED KINGDOM
+44 (0)191 222 3636
bruce.baker@newcastle.ac.uk
Area of Specialization
Educational Background
Employment
Honors
Grants
Publications
Presentations and Conference Participation
Professional Service at Newcastle University and other Institutions
Professional Service to Discipline
Area of Specialization Δ
Modern U.S. (since 1865)
Modern U.S. South (since 1865)
African American History & Culture
Labor History
Business History
Educational Background Δ
Ph.D. December 2003, History, University of North Carolina
dissertation: "Devastated by Passion and Belief: Remembering Reconstruction in the Twentieth-Century South" (directed by Jacquelyn Dowd Hall)
M.A. August 1995, Folklore, University of North Carolina
thesis: "Lynching Ballads in North Carolina" (directed by Daniel W. Patterson)
B.A. December 1992, English, Clemson University
B.A. December 1992, Philosophy, Clemson University
Employment Δ
2013 Fall - present, Lecturer in American History, Newcastle University
2008 Spring - 2013 Fall, Senior Lecturer in United States History, Royal Holloway, University of London
2004 Fall - 2008 Spring, Lecturer in United States History, Royal Holloway, University of London
2004 Spring, Instructor, Department of History, University of Wisconsin-Superior
2003 Fall, Teaching Fellow, Department of History, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
1996-1999, adjunct instructor of English, Trident Technical College, Charleston, S.C.
1996 Spring, adjunct instructor, Department of English, University of North Carolina-Charlotte
1995-1998, freelance folklorist working in Kentucky, North Carolina, and South Carolina
1995-1996, adjunct instructor, Department of English, York County Technical College, Rock Hill, S.C.
Honors Δ
2011-2012 Royal Holloway College Teaching Prize
2006-2007 Royal Holloway College Teaching Prize
2000-2003 Dolores Zohrab Liebmann Fellow
1999-2000 Andrew W. Mellon Fellow in Humanistic Studies
1993-1994 Merit Assistantship, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
1993 Winner of Roger Rollin Undergraduate Essay Contest, Clemson University
1991-1992 Outstanding Student in Philosophy, Clemson University
1988-1992 R. F. Poole Scholar, Clemson University
Grants Δ
January 2013, "Rat Proofing the Gulf Coast: Bubonic Plague, Public Health, and Urban Life in New Orleans, 1914-1915," RHUL Research Strategy Fund, £2200
June 2006, "After Slavery: Race, Labour and Politics in the Post-Emancipation Carolinas," Arts and Humanities Research Council Research Grant, £209,439 (in collaboration with Brian Kelly, Queen's University Belfast, and Susan E. O'Donovan, University of Memphis)
June 2006, "This Mob Will Surely Take My Life: Lynchings in the Carolinas, 1871-1947," British Academy Small Research Grant, £4075
October 2005, ""From New York to the New South: Hiram F. Hover's Analysis of Race and Class, 1885-1889," British Academy Overseas Conference Grant, Southern Historical Association Annual Meeting, Atlanta, Georgia, £400
Publications Δ
Books, Author
The Cotton Kings: Capitalism and Corruption in Turn-Of-The-Century New York and New Orleans, co-authored with Barbara Hahn (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015)
This Mob Will Surely Take My Life: Lynching in the Carolinas, 1871-1947 (New York and London: Continuum, 2008).
What Reconstruction Meant: Historical Memory in the American South (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2007; paperback 2010).
Books, Edited
Remembering Reconstruction: Struggles Over the Meaning of America's Most Tumultuous Era, edited by Bruce E. Baker and Carole Emberton (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, forthcoming 2017)
The South at Work: Observations from 1904, by William Garrott Brown, edited with an introduction by Bruce E. Baker, Southern Classics Series (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2014)
After Slavery: Race, Labor, and Citizenship in the Reconstruction South, edited by Bruce E. Baker and Brian Kelly (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2013).
Books, Contributor
"Drovers, Distillers, and Democrats: Economic and Political Change in Northern Greenville County, 1865 -1878," in Bruce E. Baker and Brian Kelly, eds., After Slavery: Race, Labor, and Citizenship in the Reconstruction South (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2013), 159-175.
"'The First Anarchist That Ever Came To Atlanta': Hiram F. Hover from New York to the New South" in Chris Green, Rachel Rubin, and James Smethurst, eds., Radicalism in the South Since Reconstruction (New York: Palgrave/Macmillan, 2006), 39-56.
"Under the Rope: Lynching and Memory in Laurens County, South Carolina," in W. Fitzhugh Brundage, ed., Where These Memories Grow: History, Memory, and Southern Identity (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000), 319-346.
"North Carolina Lynching Ballads," in W. Fitzhugh Brundage, ed., Under Sentence of Death: Lynching in the South (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997), 219-246.
Refereed Publications
"Why North Carolinians are Tar Heels: A New Explanation," Southern Cultures 21:4 (Winter 2015): 81-94.
"The Growth of Towns after the Civil War and the Casualization of Black Labor, 1865-1880," Tennessee Historical Quarterly 72:4 (Winter 2013): 289-300.
"Picking Blackberries and Getting By after the Civil War," Southern Cultures 16:4 (Winter 2010): 21-40.
"How W. E. B. Du Bois Won the United Daughters of the Confederacy Essay Contest," Southern Cultures (Spring 2009): 69-81.
"Lynch Law Reversed: The Rape of Lula Sherman, the Lynching of Manse Waldrop, and the Debate Over Lynching in the 1880s," American Nineteenth Century History 6:3 (September 2005): 273-293. Reprinted in William D. Carrigan, ed., Lynching Reconsidered: New Perspectives in the Study of Mob Violence (New York: Routledge, 2007).
"The Death of Emma Hartsell," Southern Cultures (Spring 2003): 82-91.
"The 'Hoover Scare' in South Carolina, 1887: An Attempt to Organize Black Farm Labor" Labor History 40:3 (August 1999): 261-282.
Non-Refereed Publications
"This Historian Has Some Advice for Bernie", on History News Network, 29 November 2015
"How the Federal Government Saved New Orleans from Disaster a Century Ago" on We're History, 2 April 2015
"The Government Shutdown Affected Agriculture, Too", on History News Network, 4 November 2013
"Ku Klux Klan, First" in Oxford Encyclopedia of American Social History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012).
Entries on "Violence in White Song," "Violence and Memory," and "Social Class and Memory" in New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture, vol. 19 and 20 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2011-2012).
"What's the Matter With South Carolina?" Government Gazette (September 2010): 153.
Entries on "Grace Lumpkin" and "Katharine Du Pre Lumpkin" in Joseph M. Flora and Amber Vogel, eds., Southern Writers: A New Biographical Directory (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2006).
Contributor to Richard Zuczek, ed., The Greenwood Encyclopedia of the Reconstruction Era (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 2006).
Contributor to Walter Edgar, ed., The South Carolina Encyclopedia (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2006).
Contributor to William S. Powell, ed., North Carolina Handbook (Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press, 2006).
Reviews
Review of David W. Blight, American Oracle: The Civil War in the Civil Rights Era, Journal of Southern History 79:1 (Feb. 2013): 228.
Review of Michael J. Pfeiffer, The Roots of Rough Justice: Origins of American Lynching, American Historical Review 116:5 (Dec. 2011): 1476-1477.
Review of Claude A. Clegg III, Troubled Ground: A Tale of Murder, Lynching, and Reckoning in the New South, Florida Historical Quarterly 90:3 (Winter 2012): 375-377.
Review of Gregory P. Downs, Declarations of Dependence: The Long Reconstruction of Popular Politics in the South, 1861-1908, H-SHGAPE, September 2011. URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=33171.
"Memory and the War: A Civil War Sesquicentennial Review," Tennessee Historical Quarterly 70:1 (Spring 2001): 52-59.
Review of Kimberly Harper, White Man's Heaven: The Lynching and Expulsion of Blacks in the Southern Ozarks, 1894-1909, Elder Mountain: A Journal of Ozarks Studies 3 (2011): 123-126.
Review of Andrew L. Slap, ed., Reconstructing Appalachia: The Civil War's Aftermath, American Historical Review 116:2 (Apr. 2011): 456-457.
Review of Kevern Verney and Lee Sartain, eds., Long Is the Way and Hard: One Hundred Years of the NAACP, Journal of American Studies (forthcoming).
Review of Mark Wahlgren Summers, A Dangerous Stir: Fear, Paranoia, and the Making of Reconstruction, Register of the Kentucky Historical Society (forthcoming).
Review of Benjamin Ginsberg, Moses of South Carolina: A Jewish Scalawag During Radical Reconstruction, Register of the Kentucky Historical Society 108:1&2 (Winter/Spring 2010): 143-144.
Review of William A. Blair and Karen Fisher Younger, eds., Lincoln's Proclamation: Emancipation Reconsidered, Slavery and Abolition 32:1 (March 2011): 163-164.
Review of Rod Andrew, Jr., Wade Hampton: Confederate Warrior to Southern Redeemer, Civil War History 56:3 (Sept. 2010): 314-315.
Review of James J. Lorence, The Unemployed People's Movement: Leftists, Liberals, and Labor in Georgia, 1929-1941, Labor 7:3 (Fall 2010): 114-116.
Review of Caroline E. Janney, Burying the Dead but Not the Past: Ladies' Memorial Associations and the Lost Cause, American Nineteenth Century History 11:2 (June 2010): 267-268.
Review of Crystal N. Feimster, Southern Horrors: Women and the Politics of Rape and Lynching, Journal of American History 97:1 (June 2010): 201-202.
Review of Janet G. Hudson, Entangled by White Supremacy: Reform in World War I-Era South Carolina, American Historical Review 114:5 (Dec. 2009): 1483-1484.
Review of Rebecca N. Hill, Men, Mobs, and Law: Anti-Lynching and Labor Defense in U.S. Radical History, Left History 14:1 (2009): 120-121.
Review of Jessica Adams, Wounds of Returning: Race, Memory, and Property on the Postslavery Plantation, Slavery and Abolition 30:1 (Mar. 2009): 173-174.
Review of Bruce W. Eelman. Entrepreneurs in the Southern Upcountry: Commercial Culture in Spartanburg, South Carolina, 1845-1880, H-Southern-Industry, November 2008. URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=22834.
Review of James Green, Death in the Haymarket: A Story of Chicago, the First Labor Movement, and the Bombing That Divided Gilded Age America, American Nineteenth Century History 9:3 (Sept. 2008): 302-03.
Review of Robert Cook, Troubled Commemoration: The American Civil War Centennial, 1961-1965, Journal of Southern History 74:3 (August 2008): 799-800.
Review of John Hammond Moore, Carnival of Blood: Dueling, Lynching, and Murder in South Carolina, 1880-1920, H-Law, H-Net Review, November 2006. URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.cgi?path=200611169490768.
Review of Russell L. Johnson, Warriors into Workers: The Civil War and the Formation of Urban-Industrial Society in a Northern City, H-CivWar, H-NET Review, September 2006. URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.cgi?path=294881178649189.
Review of Stephanie Yuhl, A Golden Haze of Memory: the Making of Historic Charleston, Journal of Southern History 72:3 (August 2006): 707-08.
Review of Kathleen Ann Clark, Defining Moments: African American Commemoration and Political Culture in the South, 1863-1913, H-South, H-NET Review, May 2006.
Review of Franny Nudelman, John Brown's Body: Slavery, Violence, and the Culture of War, Slavery and Abolition 27:1 (April 2006): 146-48.
Review of Glenn Feldman, The Disfranchisement Myth: Poor Whites and Suffrage Restriction in Alabama, Journal of American Studies 40:1 (2006): 171-72.
Review of W. Scott Poole, Never Surrender: Confederate Memory and Conservatism in the South Carolina Upcountry, Florida Historical Quarterly 83:3 (Winter 2005):343-45.
Review of Thomas C. Buchanan, Black Life on the Mississippi: Slaves, Free Blacks, and the Western Steamboat World, H-South, H-Net Reviews, April 2005. URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.cgi?path=224341137184827.
Review of Jonathan Markovitz, Legacies of Lynching: Racial Violence and Memory, H USA, H Net Reviews, September, 2004. URL: http://www.h net.org/reviews/showrev.cgi?path=56711097864116.
Review of Christopher Waldrep, The Many Faces of Judge Lynch: Extralegal Violence and Punishment in America, Law and History Review 22:3 (Summer 2004):664-65.
Exhibition review of "Stony the Road They Trod: Forced Migration of African Americans in the Slave South, 1790-1865," Journal of American History 89:3 (Dec. 2002): 984-86.
Review of David Goldfield, Still Fighting the Civil War: The American South and Southern History, H-South, H-Net Reviews, June, 2002. URL: http://www.h-net.msu.edu/reviews/showrev.cgi?path=272371027682426.
Review of David W. Blight, Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory, Southern Cultures (Spring 2002): 109-11.
"The Middle Passage Meets the Computer Age (Review of David Eltis et al., The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade: A Database on CD-ROM)," South Carolina Review 34:1 (Fall 2001):225-26.
"Urban Legends (Review of Jan Harold Brunvand, The Truth Never Stands in the Way of a Good Story," South Carolina Review 33:2 (Spring 2001).
"Folklorists from the Mountains to the Sea Islands (Review of Charles Joyner, Shared Traditions: Southern History and Folk Culture and Loyal Jones, Faith and Meaning in the Southern Uplands)," South Carolina Review 33:1 (Fall 2000):199-205.
"Peaches and Pictures (Review of Mike Corbin, Family Trees: The Peach Culture of the Piedmont and Jerry W. Cotten, Light and Air: The Photography of Bayard Wootten)," South Carolina Review 32:2 (Spring 2000):207-11.
"Review of Jane Hicks Gentry: A Singer Among Singers by Betty N. Smith," Journal of American Folklore 113 (Spring 2000): 229-30.
"Review of The Bonny Earl of Murray: The Man, the Murder, the Ballad by Edward D. Ives," Journal of American Folklore 113 (Winter 2000): 104-05.
"The Stink of Magnolia (Review of James Everett Kibler, Our Fathers' Fields)," South Carolina Review 31:2 (Spring 1999): 241 46.
"Boiled Peanuts (Review of John M. Coggeshall, Carolina Piedmont Country and Jody Blake and Jeannette Lasansky, Rural Delivery: Real Photo Postcards from Central Pennsylvania, 1905-1935)," South Carolina Review 30:2 (Spring 1998): 153 59.
Book reviews for the Charleston (S.C.) Post and Courier, February 1998 - June 1999.
Presentations and Conference Participation Δ
September 2014, "Rat Proofing the Gulf Coast: Bubonic Plague, Public Health, and Urban Life in New Orleans, 1914-1915," British American Nineteenth Century Historians Annual Conference, Reading.
April 2014, Roundtable on "Where Is the Public History of Reconstruction?" Organization of American Historians Annual Conference, Atlanta, Georgia.
May 2013, "Rat Proofing the Gulf Coast: Bubonic Plague, Public Health, and Urban Life in New Orleans, 1914-1915," Department of American and Canadian Studies Research Seminar, University of Nottingham.
March 2013, "Rings of Trade in the Age of Futures: Cotton Exchanges in Liverpool, New York, and New Orleans, 1870-1914," Business History Conference, Columbus, Ohio.
November 2012, "The SHA and H-SOUTH: The New Southern Destination," Southern Historical Association Annual Meeting, Mobile, Alabama.
April 2012, Commentator on panel "Dark and Bloody: The Politics of Remembering Reconstruction," Organization of American Historians Annual Conference, Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
October 2011, "Cornering Cotton: New Orleans Bulls, New York Bears, and the Power of Information," British American Nineteenth Century Historians Annual Conference, Cambridge.
May 2011, "Polanyi in the Piedmont: Peasant Livelihoods in the Reconstruction American South," Department of History Seminar, University of Edinburgh.
November 2010, "The Growth of Greenville and the Casualization of Black Labor, 1865-1880," Southern Historical Association Annual Meeting, Charlotte, North Carolina.
July 2010, "Directions for Post-Emancipation Studies in the American South," Rethinking Post-Slavery Conference, University of Liverpool.
March 2010, Race, Labor, and Citizenship in the Post-Emancipation South Conference, Charleston, South Carolina. (organized, chaired, commented)
January 2010, "After Slavery: In the Classroom," Workshop for University Teachers, Senate House, London (organized and presented).
October 2009, "Communities of Memory, Sites of Memory, Music of Memory: How Will New Orleans Remember Katrina?" Moving On: Conference on Memory and Trauma in History, Tulane University, New Orleans, Louisiana.
February 2009, "Browns Ferry Blues: Military Justice, Freedpeople's Testimony, and the Contest Over the End of the Civil War," Research Seminar Series, Marcus Cunliffe Centre for the Study of the American South, University of Sussex.
October 2008, "The Making of the Piedmont Working Class: Reconstruction, Redemption, and Textile Workers, 1865-1885," Wiles Colloquium, Rethinking Reconstruction: Race, Labour and Politics after the American Civil War, Queen's University, Belfast.
May 2008, "'A Foreign Friend Who Taught Me To Appreciate the Past of My Native State': Francis Butler Simkins, Gilberto Freyre, and Transnational Influences on Southern History in the 1920s," Association Française d'Études Américaines, Montpellier, France.
February 2008, "Drovers, Distillers, and Democrats: Economic and Political Change in Northern Greenville County, 1865 -1878," European Social Science History Conference, Lisbon, Portugal.
December 2007, "How W. E. B. Du Bois Won the United Daughters of the Confederacy Essay Contest," American History Colloquium, Queen's University Belfast.
November 2007, "Settling Scores: The Deep Roots of Racial Violence," Social Science History Association Annual Meeting, Chicago, Illinois.
October 2007, "After Reconstruction: Struggles over Race and Labor in the Carolinas," British American Nineteenth Century Historians Annual Conference, Cambridge.
September 2007, "Social Memory of Reconstruction in the South during the 1920s," Southern Studies Forum of the European Association for American Studies, Palacky University, Olomouc, Czech Republic.
March 2007, "Reconstruction and Public Memory in Anderson County, South Carolina, 1905-1920," Our Past Before Us: The Search for the South Carolina Upcountry Conference, Clemson University, Clemson, South Carolina.
February 2007, "Reconstruction's Legacy, Disfranchisement, and the Struggle for Voting Rights," America's 400th Anniversary: Voices from within the Veil Conference, Norfolk State University, Norfolk, Virginia.
January 2007, "Folk Culture and Historical Memory in the American South," Memory from Transdisciplinary Perspectives: Agency, Practices, and Mediations conference, Research Centre of Culture and Communication at the University of Tartu, Estonia.
October 2006, "How W. E. B. Du Bois Won the United Daughters of the Confederacy Essay Contest," American History Seminar, Institute for Historical Research, London.
November 2005, "The Returns of the Red Shirts: Historical Memory of the End of Reconstruction in South Carolina," American History Seminar, University of Cambridge.
November 2005, "From New York to the New South: Hiram F. Hover's Analysis of Race and Class, 1885-1889," Southern Historical Association Annual Meeting, Atlanta, Georgia.
October 2005, "'The First Anarchist That Ever Came to Atlanta': Hiram F. Hover from New York to the New South, 1885-1889," American Studies Seminar, University of Reading.
October 2005, "Reconstruction and Public Memory in Anderson County, South Carolina, 1905-1920," Association of British American Nineteenth Century Historians conference, Cambridge.
January 2005, "No Truly Moderate Position: Katharine Du Pre Lumpkin's Lost Novel and the Southern Front's Vision of Reconstruction," American Studies Research Seminar, University of Sussex.
January 2005, "Refugees From Reconstruction: African American Countermemory in a National Context," at American Historical Association Annual Meeting, Seattle, Washington.
October 2004, "Commemorating a Counterrevolution: South Carolina's Red Shirt Reunions in the Early Twentieth Century," Department of History Staff Seminar, Royal Holloway, University of London.
March 2003, "Redefining Reconstruction: The Emergence of Black Voting and the Historical Memory of Reconstruction in South Carolina," at The Citadel Conference on the Civil Rights Movement in South Carolina, Charleston, South Carolina.
January 2003, "Remembering Reconstruction Violence in the Progressive Era," at American Historical Association Annual Meeting, Chicago, Illinois.
November 2002, "Following the Gun: Creating Icons of White Supremacy in South Carolina," at American Studies Association Annual Meeting, Houston, Texas.
October 2002, "Lynch Law Reversed: The Lynching of Manse Waldrop," at Lynching and Racial Violence in America: Histories and Legacies, Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia.
October 2000, "Roundtable: A County at the Crossroads: Chatham, North Carolina, 2000," at Oral History Association Annual Meeting, Durham, North Carolina.
March 2000, "Picnic, Parade, and Gender Politics at the 1909 Red Shirt Reunion," at Graduate Student Conference on Southern History, University of Mississippi, Oxford, Mississippi.
July 1999, "Some Considerations on the Material Culture of Lynching," at Southern Writers, Southern Writing Conference, University of Mississippi, Oxford, Mississippi.
October 1995, "'This Mob Will Surely Take My Life': Meaning in Lynching Ballads," at American Folklore Society Meeting, Lafayette, Louisiana.
October 1994, "Professional Musicians at White Top Folk Festival," at American Folklore Society meeting, Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
April 1994, "Place Names and Narrative Knowledge in Brian Friel's Translations," at the Commonwealth and Post Colonial Studies Conference, Georgia Southern University, Statesboro, Georgia.
Professional Service at RHUL and other Institutions Δ
COLLEGE
2005-2007 , E-Learning Strategy Working Group
2005-2006 , Computer Users Advisory Group
2005-2007 , Web Steering Group
2007-2010 , University and College Union local branch membership secretary
2008-2013 , RHUL Green Team
2008-2013 , Academic Board
2009-2010 , College Website Redesign Group
2010-2013 , E-Learning Users Advisory Group
2011, University and College Union local branch chair
2011-2013 , Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences Research Group
2014-2017 , Degree Programme Director for History and History & Politics
2015- , Vice-President of Newcastle University and College Union
DEPARTMENTAL
2013-2014 , library liaison for History
2005-2010 , webmaster
2004-2005, Careers Office liaison
2001-2002, co-president of Graduate History Society
2001-2003, graduate student representative on Graduate Studies Committee
Professional Service to Discipline Δ
2004-2013 , American History Seminar (co-convener), Institute for Historical Research, London.
2007-2014 , List editor for H-SOUTH
2007- , Association of British American Nineteenth Century Historians committee
2010- , Co-editor, American Nineteenth Century History
Reviewed Book Manuscripts and Proposals
Ashgate, Routledge, Sage, University of Illinois Press, Oxford University Press, University of North Carolina Press, University of Arkansas Press
Reviewed Article Manuscripts
Journal of American History, Business History Review, Southern Cultures, Patterns of Prejudice, Civil War History, Journal of American Studies, American Nineteenth Century History, Tennessee Historical Quarterly, Labour History Review
Peer Review of Tenure and Promotion
John Jay College of Criminal Justice--CCNY, University of South Carolina
Dr Bruce Baker
Lecturer in Modern American History
Email: bruce.baker@ncl.ac.uk
Telephone: 0191 208 3636
Personal Website: http://bruceebaker.com
Address: School of History, Classics, and Archaeology
Armstrong Building
Newcastle University
Newcastle upon Tyne
NE1 7RU
UNITED KINGDOM
Background
Research
Teaching
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Introduction
I joined the School of History, Classics, and Archaeology in September 2013 as Lecturer in Modern American History. Most of my teaching and research centres on the American South between the Civil War and the 1920s. I am co-editor of the journal American Nineteenth Century History.
Qualifications
Ph.D. in History, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2003
M.A. in Folklore, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1995
B.A. in English, Clemson University, 1992
B.A. in English, Clemson University, 1992
Previous Positions
2004-2013, Lecturer/Senior Lecturer in United States History, Royal Holloway, University of London
2004, Visiting Lecturer, University of Wisconsin-Superior
2003, Teaching Fellow, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
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I am on research leave this semester and will not be holding office hours.
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QUOTED: "The Cotton Kings argues the Cotton Futures Act adopted many of the practices of the victorious bulls."
"This story demonstrates why the exchanges' self-regulatory measures were insufficient to curb the negative effects of speculation. Baker and Hahn also demonstrate how price volatility whet the appetites of market actors, not to mention Congress, for government regulation of the cotton exchanges, culminating in the Cotton Futures Act of 1914."
The Cotton Kings: Capitalism and Corruption in Turn-of-the-Century New York and New Orleans
Elizabeth Brake
83.1 (Feb. 2017): p196.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 Southern Historical Association
http://www.uga.edu/~sha
The Cotton Kings: Capitalism and Corruption in Turn-of-the-Century New York and New Orleans. By Bruce E. Baker and Barbara Hahn. (New York and other cities: Oxford University Press, 2016. Pp. xiv, 214. $29.95, ISBN 978-0-19-021165-3.)
The Cotton Kings: Capitalism and Corruption in Turn-of-the-Century New York and New Orleans uses the analytical frameworks of the history of capitalism to demonstrate how the actions of individuals, institutions, and nature constitute global markets. Bruce E. Baker and Barbara Hahn demonstrate how members of the New Orleans and New York cotton exchanges used networks of information and capital to fight for control over the price of cotton at the turn of the twentieth century. This story demonstrates why the exchanges' self-regulatory measures were insufficient to curb the negative effects of speculation. Baker and Hahn also demonstrate how price volatility whet the appetites of market actors, not to mention Congress, for government regulation of the cotton exchanges, culminating in the Cotton Futures Act of 1914.
The New York and New Orleans cotton exchanges were central institutions in the global market for cotton. The authors deftly explain how futures markets allowed farmers and cotton mills to hedge against price changes while the holder of the contract assumed the risks and the profit potential of price volatility. The New York Cotton Exchange (NYCE) and the New Orleans Cotton Exchange (NOCE) facilitated these trades, but with key institutional differences. The NYCE was populated by bearish traders who worked to keep prices low, while the NOCE was home to bullish traders who sought to raise cotton prices.
Information is a central focus of the analysis. Buyers and sellers required information about supply and demand: crop yield, mill orders, weather events, and boll weevil infestations. The cotton exchanges acted as sources and interpreters of this information. Those interpretations informed their trading activities, which in turn provided additional information to the market. Much of the available information, however, was unreliable and vulnerable to manipulation. Bears promoted sources that overestimated crop sizes in the fall, keeping prices paid to farmers low. The bulls took advantage of summer shortages and better information about local conditions to bolster prices. The United States Department of Agriculture's (USDA) efforts to provide a neutral and widely available source of information failed largely because of corruption (real and perceived) within the USDA.
Institutional differences between the exchanges allowed the bears and bulls to execute their separate strategies. Different rules and norms governed traders' actions in the market across exchanges, and each exchange enforced its own rules. Only members could trade futures contracts, and misbehavior would result in expulsion. This self-regulation of the cotton exchanges was the only regulation they faced before 1914.
This was the environment in which the exchanges battled as bulls cornered the market in 1903 and 1910. The New York bears leaned on the social and political networks that connected them to powerful federal officials. They attempted to exhaust the bulls' financial resources and initiated antitrust litigation. The bulls leveraged their superior information about prevailing conditions and mobilized personal and professional networks in New Orleans and beyond to amass sufficient capital to achieve the corner.
The New Orleans traders are the heroes of The Cotton Kings because they broke the influence of the NYCE, which had impoverished farmers with sustained low prices. However, Baker and Hahn demonstrate that the market volatility produced by the conflict between bulls and bears was harmful to farmers and millers. Regulation was necessary to impose standard, enforceable practices across exchanges. Congress responded with the Cotton Futures Act of 1914, which addressed the institutional conditions that facilitated manipulation of information and abusive speculation. The act instituted rules about the characteristics of cotton delivered in fulfillment of contracts and provided the secretary of agriculture more control over price variations across exchanges.
The Cotton Kings argues the Cotton Futures Act adopted many of the practices of the victorious bulls and was the result of cooperation and information-sharing between futures traders and lawmakers. In so doing, the exchanges and the government demonstrated that regulation could create an environment in which futures contracts could fulfill their real purpose in the market--to act as effective hedging tools and necessary sources of information in a global commodity market.
Elizabeth Brake
Duke University
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Brake, Elizabeth. "The Cotton Kings: Capitalism and Corruption in Turn-of-the-Century New York and New Orleans." Journal of Southern History, vol. 83, no. 1, 2017, p. 196+. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA481354173&it=r&asid=5b9be50b171c5792a140c293c8f17d49. Accessed 6 July 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A481354173
QUOTED: "This well-researched volume makes a useful contribution to the field as well as to our understanding of southern culture."
What Reconstruction Meant: Historical Memory in the American South by Bruce E. Baker (review)
by Michael Kammen
Southern Cultures, Vol. 18, No. 4: Winter 2012
University of Virginia Press, 2009
A flourishing cottage industry customarily called “memory studies” is now thrusting into its third decade. This well-researched volume makes a useful contribution to the field as well as to our understanding of southern culture. The author rightly declares that “social memory is one of the key elements that constitutes social groups; social groups tend to share an understanding of their common past, though not, as we will see, without dissenting voices” (7). Baker’s approach rests upon three “enthymematic” ideas that range from assumptions to assertions. First, that oral tradition on the local level provides a basis for social memory. Second, that distinguishing between memories in public and private discourse permits a better picture of the range of social memories and their interconnectedness. And third, that when social memory becomes dominant in social discourse readers must also be aware of counter-memories. In this monograph devoted primarily to South Carolina, with occasional references to Virginia, North Carolina, and Georgia, the dominant social memory, only beginning to fade during the 1970s, was a white supremacist narrative of Reconstruction following the Civil War.
QUOTED: "Moving beyond a generalized study of the entire region to intensive localized studies, the ten essays span the South geographically, giving the reader snapshots into the various facets of freedpeople's lives."
"Coeditors Baker and Kelly, along with the contributors, provide an informative study of labor history in the Reconstruction South. The essays show that the working-class narrative is key to a complete understanding of the remaking of the South. Raising provocative questions about black/white relations in the labor movement, workers' responses to labor legislation, and the role of gender (especially conceptions of manhood), the work encourages additional analysis of laborers' experiences. In sum, After Slavery is enlightening scholarship on the history of labor and citizenship in the post-emancipation era."
French on Baker and Kelly, 'After Slavery: Race, Labor, and Citizenship in the Reconstruction South'
Author:
Bruce E. Baker, Brian Kelly, eds.
Reviewer:
Amy French
Bruce E. Baker, Brian Kelly, eds. After Slavery: Race, Labor, and Citizenship in the Reconstruction South. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2013. 279 pp. $24.95 (paper), ISBN 978-0-8130-6097-2; $74.95 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-8130-4477-4.
Reviewed by Amy French (Delta College)
Published on H-SHGAPE (August, 2014)
Commissioned by K. Stephen Prince
Freed Laborers in the Reconstruction South
In Black Reconstruction in America, 1860-1880 (1935), W. E. B. Du Bois emphasized the importance of studying the era through the lens of labor. Influenced by Du Bois's assertion that the working-class deserves a prominent role in the telling of the history of Reconstruction, the scholars contributing essays to After Slavery: Race, Labor, and Citizenship in the Reconstruction South show the crucial role that laborers played in shaping an economic system to replace slavery, defining post-emancipation freedom, and securing political and economic rights. The Reconstruction era was a turbulent time for all Americans, but southerners faced the unique challenges of replacing their labor system, and reconstructing their social, political, and physical infrastructure. Explaining the disparity between promises made and experiences lived, the authors show the difficulties that freed laborers faced as they tried to negotiate labor contracts, hold relationships with employers as paid employees, claim rights of citizenship, and act upon new freedoms. Moving beyond a generalized study of the entire region to intensive localized studies, the ten essays span the South geographically, giving the reader snapshots into the various facets of freedpeople's lives.
Freedpeople's agency in shaping their lives and determining the restructuring of the South has long interested historians. Erik Mathisen and Gregory Downs both explore that autonomy. Looking at Mississippi, Mathisen shows how demands for property became the basis for freedmen's relationship with the federal government. Asserting that loyalty to the Union was political currency for both whites and blacks, Mathisen argues that freedmen leveraged loyalty for federal protection, rights, and claims to property. Thus, freed Mississippians were tied to the federal government in their bid for citizenship and property. Downs explores the relationship between former slaves in North Carolina and the Freedmen's Bureau. Lacking power, freedpeople looked to allies in the federal government to provide support and keep order. However, Freedmen's Bureau agents lacked power, staffing, and the military presence to provide meaningful assistance. Downs, therefore, provides a picture of why federal power failed and "the central role of state institutions in shaping the experience of Reconstruction and the extent and limits of emancipation" (p .99).
Building on scholarship regarding Republican Party inadequacies, Bruce Baker looks at a generally neglected cast of characters—poor, upcountry whites in South Carolina. There was a potential constituency for a white Republican Party in the mountain area of Greenville County, but Baker argues that economic initiatives by local Republicans and national party policies undermined their potential constituents and drove the area to a dramatic political realignment. Brian Kelly also looks at missed opportunities by the Republican Party. Studying the collapse of Reconstruction in South Carolina, Kelly shows that race did not unite all freedpeople in their vision of the new South. Working-class blacks had supported Radical Republicans, but fragmented Republican leadership failed to serve their laboring constituents. When Republican officials opposed labor tactics like striking, they turned their backs on their supporters and hastened the end of their rule. Tracing the rise of more conservative African American politics, Kelly's study also reveals social stratification in South Carolina between laborers and a small contingency of middle-class Democrats.
James Illingworth's study of black urban workers in New Orleans provides a picture of grassroots activism with labor at its core. Illingworth argues that from 1865 to 1868, "the interplay between federal state intervention and urban working people's activism became the determining factor in the progress of change at the local level" (p. 37). New Orleans laborers successfully used labor protest as economic and political capital to advance a vision for their city that embraced Radical Reconstruction. Although Illingworth demonstrates that strong local support could encourage more immediate change, Jonathan Bryant reveals the fragility of freedmen's power. Studying the Ogeechee Insurrection, Bryant asserts that the media and elite officials manipulated the event to make it seem as if it were a lawless rebellion when, in fact, it was a labor dispute by Georgian workers who were trying to use their newly gained political and economic rights to assert control over labor relations.
Undermining progress for freedpeople was the use of violence to suppress their voices and actions. Michael Fitzgerald explores myriad motivations for racial terrorism in Alabama by studying men indicted under the federal anti-Klan legislation of 1871. Fitzgerald's work identifies a larger body of participants than have previously been detected and provides new light on their circumstances. He finds that these men were "downwardly mobile on a vast, even catastrophic scale" (p. 149). Fitzgerald's study gives a more complete picture than previous studies of the perpetrators and the reasons for their violent actions. As most of the authors note, racial terror was an effective method to thwart Reconstruction. But all of the South did not experience the return of elite white rule by 1877. Susan O'Donovan shows how family connections and community networks staved off Redemption in Wilmington, North Carolina, until 1898, when racial terror swept through the town forcing "an exodus that dramatically remade the city's public and political face" (p. 177). Why did Democrats have such a difficult time taking control of Wilmington? Through a detailed examination of the Freedman's Savings and Trust Company records, O'Donovan explains that Wilmington ex-slaves had certain advantages that other freedmen did not, including strong family ties; jobs in powerful seaport industries where a host of information exchange occurred; homes in multicultural, urban areas; and involvement in community organizations. Because of the array of social and institutional resources available to them, O'Donovan holds that freedpeople were able to hold off a return to elite, white control for a relatively long time.
J. Michael Rhyne reminds us how frequently issues of gender are inherent in acts of violence. In his study of Kentucky, Rhyne notes how violent tactics emasculated freedmen while restoring manhood to white perpetrators. Freedwomen were also abused and assaulted—their gender did not afford them the same protections as white women. Besides the fact that Kentucky government officials often turned a blind eye to the violent treatment of emancipated laborers, the apprenticeship system and vagrancy laws underscored that freed Kentuckians did not enjoy a truly free labor system. Such issues are not unique to the South, though. In his comparison of late eighteenth-century Guadeloupe to late twentieth-century American sweatshops, Thomas Holt notes that a principal area of contest after the abolition of slavery has been the control of women's labor.
Through a broad scope of sources and clear organization, the collection shows the varied roles that laborers played in defining freedom, securing rights, and remaking the post-emancipation South. The essays show a rich use of censuses, newspapers, military accounts, congressional documents, Freedman's Savings and Trust Company and Freedmen's Bureau records, and archival sources. The sources are only as good as the questions posed, however, and here the authors shine. By framing some of the old debates in light of labor history, as well as asking new and provocative questions, the collection provides an interesting look into the Reconstruction South. Through localized studies, the reader journeys into aspects of history that may not have been universal, but should not be marginalized. Adding to the broad scope of the work, O'Donovan and Kelly expand the chronological period of Reconstruction to 1898 and 1900, respectively. This "long Reconstruction era" gives a more complete picture of the issues in light of the broader course of national history and assists in understanding the racial divisions in the southern labor movement.
As a history of labor and citizenship in the Reconstruction South, After Slavery would have benefited from further discussion of the legal frameworks structuring mid- to late nineteenth-century labor relations. An underlying premise of the collection is that freedpeople understood that to truly be free they needed property. By the turn of the century, classical legal thought emphasized individual rights based on property (tangible or otherwise) and largely disregarded how the nation treated laborers, especially former slaves and women.[1] As historian Eric Foner notes in the afterword: "Liberty of contract, not equality before the law for blacks, came to be defined as the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment" (p. 228). Considering the powerful role of judicial discourse in defining citizenship and freedom of contract, legal aspects of freedmen's work are important to the labor narrative of Reconstruction.
Coeditors Baker and Kelly, along with the contributors, provide an informative study of labor history in the Reconstruction South. The essays show that the working-class narrative is key to a complete understanding of the remaking of the South. Raising provocative questions about black/white relations in the labor movement, workers' responses to labor legislation, and the role of gender (especially conceptions of manhood), the work encourages additional analysis of laborers' experiences. In sum, After Slavery is enlightening scholarship on the history of labor and citizenship in the post-emancipation era.
Note
[1]. Melvin Urofsky and Paul Finkelman, A March of Liberty: A Constitutional History of the United States (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 2:518.
Printable Version: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showpdf.php?id=41276
Citation: Amy French. Review of Baker, Bruce E.; Kelly, Brian, eds., After Slavery: Race, Labor, and Citizenship in the Reconstruction South. H-SHGAPE, H-Net Reviews. August, 2014.
URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=41276
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
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