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Dissertation Information for John C. Rodrigue

NAME:
- John C. Rodrigue

DEGREE:
- Ph.D.

DISCIPLINE:
- History

SCHOOL:
- Emory University (USA) (1993)

ADVISORS:
- James L Roark

COMMITTEE MEMBERS:
- Dan T. Carter
- Elizabeth Fox-Genovese

MPACT Status: Fully Complete

Title: Raising cane: From slavery to free labor in Louisiana's sugar parishes, 1862-1880

Abstract: This dissertation examines the transition from slavery to free labor in the cane sugar region of southeastern Louisiana during the Civil War, Reconstruction, and early post-Reconstruction period. It argues that the particular demands of traditional sugar production in Louisiana gave freedpeople considerable leverage in their struggle with planters over the new labor system. In contrast to sharecropping and tenancy, which replaced slavery in the cotton South, wage labor and centralized plantation routine supplanted slavery in the postbellum sugar region. Consequently, wages and the method of payment became the principal points of conflict between sugar planters and freedpeople. Clashes also arose, however, over such matters as the conditions of labor, access to plantation resources, and free rations and housing, all of which freedpeople deemed important supplements to wages. Capitalizing on the demands of the crop and on the centralized organization of plantation routine, freedpeople gained advantageous terms on wages and on ancillary matters. Their very successes, in turn, impelled freedpeople to tolerate work routines under free labor that bore strong resemblance to those of the slave regime.

Confrontation over wages and supplementary matters resulted, at a deeper level, from the contending visions of free labor advanced by planters and freedpeople. Sugar planters hoped to reestablish the control over labor that they believed was essential to sugar production in Louisiana. By contrast, freedpeople, while recognizing the need for some centralization of plantation routine, nonetheless envisioned a labor system that ensured their personal autonomy within that centralized regimen. Although freedpeople did not achieve completely their vision of free labor, they prevented sugar planters from implementing their own more limited version.

Slavery's demise marked a fundamental transformation in relations between white sugar planters and black sugar workers, despite the apparent similarities between sugar plantation routine under slavery and free labor. Indeed, the demands of sugar cultivation and the collective organization of work became sources of strength for freedpeople and enabled them to escape the grinding oppression that characterized the sharecropping system of the cotton South.

MPACT Scores for John C. Rodrigue

A = 0
C = 0
A+C = 0
T = 0
G = 0
W = 0
TD = 0
TA = 0
calculated 2008-04-14 09:52:30

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Students under John C. Rodrigue

ADVISEES:
- None

COMMITTEESHIPS:
- None