Concluding Observations

These case studies of the Virginia and Illinois regions have been presented with diverging themes of ethnicities and racism. At a practical level, analytic concepts of ethnicities can be employed effectively to understand some places, times, and populations. One should expect change in these social networks, often within just a few decades. For other times, locations, and communities, the impacts of racial ideologies make the analysis of racism a more productive approach. That contrast of ethnicity and racism arises in larger-scale debates concerning the usefulness of these two conceptual frameworks. Researchers have frequently examined the question of whether an analytic concept of racism is better replaced by concepts of ethnic group relations. No consensus has emerged over decades of debates. Scholars in some regions are affected by “post-racial” political agendas that influence them to depart from the terminology of racism in favor of alternative concepts of ethnicities. Such initiatives have impacted researchers in South Africa. They often frame their research within the broader social context of the post-racial policies of the Mandela presidency and later administrations. The U.S. certainly has not entered such a post-racial era.

Racism’s Waste and Resilient Entrepreneurs

Many instances of racism in the United States occurred through open declarations of prejudice and overt acts of malevolence and violence. Many other impacts of racism occur in more structural and indirect ways. Such structural forms of racism have been conceptualized as manifestations of “aversive” racism. In a process of aversive racism, members of a dominant social group channel social and economic activities away from a group targeted by racial prejudices. This manipulation of economic and social opportunities, resources, and interactions is typically detrimental to members of the targeted group. It is very difficult to uncover evidence of aversive or structural racism and present a detailed, persuasive account of that data. Lacking detailed evidence, most statements about structural racism are made only as broad-scale observations of the suspected impacts. The difficulty lies in the surreptitious character of aversive racism. One does not find photos of overt acts or transparent minutes of conspiratorial meetings. Instead, a large collection of separate bits of data must be woven together and dots connected to test alternative interpretations against a body of varied, circumstantial evidence. Fennell took up this task in the New Philadelphia Archaeology Project. He was intrigued at the outset with the question of why a railroad bypassed New Philadelphia in 1869.

Introduction

The introduction provides an overview of the themes of world economic systems, global commodity chains, and ways in which development plans can be thwarted by local social networks and ostensibly peripheral players. This chapter opens the subject of the ways in which these theories have neglected the impacts of ethnic networks and racism upon economic dynamics. This critique is revisited and expanded in the concluding chapters seven and eleven.

Overcoming Enslavement with Toil, Gunpowder, and Land

The town of New Philadelphia was situated on the western edge of Illinois, in Hadley Township and Pike County. The community was just 25 miles east of the Mississippi River and Hannibal, Missouri. New Philadelphia was the first town planned in advance, platted, and legally registered by an African American in the United States. Frank McWorter founded the town in 1836. He was born into slavery in South Carolina in 1777, purchased his freedom in 1819, and established New Philadelphia decades later. The town grew from the 1840s through the late 1800s as a multiracial community. New Philadelphia was located in a region riven by racial ideologies and strife. Competing factions of proslavery elements and abolitionists clashed in western Illinois and the neighboring slave state of Missouri in the antebellum decades. No incidents of racial violence were reported to have occurred within the town. African-American residents of the community worked to obtain land and produce agricultural commodities. Others provided services as blacksmiths and carpenters. Through these enterprises they worked to defy the structural racism of the region that was meant to channel resources and economic value away from them.

Concluding Observations

This analysis contributes to studies that identify how social and cultural relationships facilitated or inhibited the spread of a Trans-Atlantic exchange system dominated by British economic interests. Other analysts have examined the remarkable expansion in the volume and variety of British-manufactured goods consumed in households of the North American colonies from the mid-eighteenth century onward. Part I of this book thus illustrated the ways in which concepts of ethnicity, trade spheres, and commodity chains can illuminate past social and economic trajectories.

Elite Strategies, Local Networks

“Elite Strategies, Local Networks” outlines analytic frameworks for studying the clash of development strategies and local social networks. Fennell starts by laying out definitions of ethnic groups and how individual action and group solidarity interact. Next, one considers how individual and group dynamics shape material culture and the built environment. Finally, Fennell describes the influences of development plans on regional scales and spatial models for understanding economic structures and commodity chains. The theory framework described here provides a powerful, flexible way to analyze a great variety of cultural systems.

Surmounting Adversities in the Land of Lincoln

The history of New Philadelphia illustrates significant elements of the systemic impacts of racism on citizens and communities in the United States. Similar experiences are presented in the development of other communities that struggled against such adversities. This chapter examines additional case studies of structural racism in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in Illinois. In his study of “sundown towns,” James Loewen found that many Illinois towns engaged in extensive discrimination in this period. Such sundown jurisdictions permitted African Americans access to their terrain as laborers during the day, but not as residents. His research showed that “almost all all-white towns and counties in Illinois were all-white on purpose” by the early twentieth century. In contrast, other communities embodied African-American aspirations. Fennell examines such racial dynamics using examples from archaeological and historical analysis of three more African-American communities in Illinois: Miller Grove, Brooklyn, and the Equal Rights settlement outside of Galena.

Local Archaeology and Transatlantic Competitions

Archaeological investigations of several house sites in the upper Potomac and northern Shenandoah region provide additional evidence on the levels of demand and consumption of imported British ceramic goods. “Local Archaeology and Transatlantic Competitions” discusses archaeological investigations of the following household sites that were occupied during the period of 1750 to 1865: the Demory site in Loudoun County, Virginia; the Reiff site in Washington County, Maryland; the Countryside Development site in Loudoun County; the Pohoke and Portici Plantation sites in Prince William County, Virginia; and the Reed Farmstead site in Hardy County, West Virginia. These investigations demonstrate that imported, mass-produced British ceramic wares were readily available to consumers, even at the western-most edges of this backcountry region in the eighteenth century. However, the levels of consumption again appear notably lower than seen in investigations of the Chesapeake Tidewater region from the same period. A number of sites in this backcountry region provide evidence suggesting that residents exercised stylistic preferences related to social group affiliations.

George Washington’s Great Emporium

In the 1790s, government officials and members of a socioeconomic elite in the United States implemented a strategy for rapidly increasing the economic development of the upper Potomac and northern Shenandoah region. Harpers Ferry, Virginia, was chosen as one of two locations for the construction and operation of federal armaments manufacturing for the United States. A government-sponsored manufacturing town was established there starting in 1794. This location on the upper Potomac River was chosen due to a variety of strategic concerns. George Washington participated in this decision, both as an economic investor and as a government representative influencing the deployment of public funds. “George Washington’s Great Emporium” opens a study of these impacts.

Ethnic Networks and a Cultural Landscape in the Backcountry

Principal influences on consumer preferences in the Potomac and northern Shenandoah region and period included ethnic affiliations and local social networks. “Ethnic Networks and a Cultural Landscape in the Backcountry” addresses the cohesiveness of German immigrant populations in this region. Their use of material culture to convey their group affiliations was evident in a number of ways. For example, those residents employed vernacular architecture traditions in building their houses that included techniques and styles that communicated their shared heritage. Fennell examines a case study of such architectural patterns at the Demory house site in Loudoun County, Virginia, and relate it to larger-scale studies of German-American building traditions in this region and period.