Sweet Tyranny: Migrant Labor, Industrial Agriculture, and Imperial Politics

Sweet Tyranny: Migrant Labor, Industrial Agriculture, and Imperial Politics

by Kathleen Mapes
ISBN-10:
0252076672
ISBN-13:
9780252076671
Pub. Date:
05/19/2009
Publisher:
University of Illinois Press
ISBN-10:
0252076672
ISBN-13:
9780252076671
Pub. Date:
05/19/2009
Publisher:
University of Illinois Press
Sweet Tyranny: Migrant Labor, Industrial Agriculture, and Imperial Politics

Sweet Tyranny: Migrant Labor, Industrial Agriculture, and Imperial Politics

by Kathleen Mapes
$33.0
Current price is , Original price is $33.0. You
$33.00 
  • SHIP THIS ITEM
    Qualifies for Free Shipping
  • PICK UP IN STORE
    Check Availability at Nearby Stores
  • SHIP THIS ITEM

    Temporarily Out of Stock Online

    Please check back later for updated availability.


Overview

In this innovative grassroots to global study, Kathleen Mapes explores how the sugar beet industry transformed the rural Midwest through the introduction of large factories, contract farming, and foreign migrant labor. Sweet Tyranny calls into question the traditional portrait of the rural Midwest as a classless and homogenous place untouched by industrialization and imperialism. Identifying rural areas as centers for modern American industrialism, Mapes contributes to the ongoing expansion of labor history from urban factory workers to rural migrant workers. She engages with a full range of people involved in this industry, including midwestern family farmers, industrialists, eastern European and Mexican immigrants, child laborers, rural reformers, Washington politicos, and colonial interests.

Engagingly written, this book demonstrates that capitalism was not solely a force from above but was influenced by the people below who defended their interests in an ever-expanding market of imperialist capitalism. The fact that the United States acquired its own sugar producing empire at the very moment that its domestic sugar beet industry was coming into its own, as well as the fact that the domestic sugar beet industry came to depend on immigrant workers as the basis of its field labor force, magnified the local and global ties as well as the political battles that ensued. As such, the issue of how Americans would satiate their growing demand for sweetness—whether with beet sugar grown at home or with cane sugar raised in colonies abroad—became part of a much larger debate about the path of industrial agriculture, the shape of American imperialism, and the future of immigration.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780252076671
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
Publication date: 05/19/2009
Series: Working Class in American History
Edition description: 1st Edition
Pages: 336
Product dimensions: 6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Kathleen Mapes is an associate professor of history at the State University of New York, Geneseo.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments ix

Introduction 1

1 Rural Industrialization and Imperial Politics 13

2 Contract Farming in Rural Michigan 39

3 Family Farms, Child Labor, and Migrant Families 65

4 Farmers and the Great War 96

5 Immigrant Labor and the Guest Worker Program 122

6 Mexican Immigrants and Immigration Debate 143

7 Child Labor Reformers and Industrial Agriculture 166

8 Remaking Imperialism and the Industrial Countryside 186

9 The Politics of Migrant Labor 215

Epilogue 241

Notes 247

Index 301

Illustrations follow page 64

From the B&N Reads Blog

Customer Reviews