Ulrich Bonnell Phillips Books

An American historian who studied the antebellum South and the institution of slavery. Phillips focused on the large plantations that shaped the Southern economy, largely overlooking smaller farmers with fewer enslaved people. He concluded that plantation slavery, while generating wealth, was an economic dead end that left the South bypassed by the North's industrial revolution. By shifting scholarly focus from the divisive political debates over slavery, Phillips established the economics and social structure of slavery as the central theme in 20th-century historical research. His eloquent writing style and novel approach made him the most influential historian of the ante-bellum South, and his interpretation of white supremacy as the "central theme of southern history" remains a significant lens through which Southern history is understood.