"From the founding of Georgia until the eve of the Civil War, Georgia's racial order shifted from a somewhat fluid conception of race dominant in the colonial era to a harsher understanding of racial difference that became prevalent in the antebellum era. Georgia evolved from a multiracial society in which people of European, African, and Native American ancestry contested for power into a slavery-based society where white and black became synonymous with free and enslaved. (Continued). "In Cultivating Race: The Expansion of Slavery in Georgia, 1750-1860, Watson W. Jennison explores the centrality of race in the development of Georgia, arguing that long-term structural and demographic changes account for the state's transformation. Jennison traces the rise of rice cultivation and the plantation system in lowcountry Georgia in the mid-eighteenth century and charts the spread of slavery into the upcountry in the decades that followed. In the wake of the American Revolution, the growth of the white population in the interior of Georgia repositioned the demographic, economic, and political center of the state. The expulsion of the Creek and Cherokee Indians and the subsequent settling of Georgia's blackbelt gave upcountry whites an increasingly influential voice in the state's political affairs, including matters related to slavery and race. The emergence of the cotton kingdom fundamentally reordered relations among blacks, whites, and Native Americans. The result was a racially bifurcated society that stood in marked contrast to the racial order that characterized life in early Georgia. (Continued). "Using a variety of primary sources, including newspapers, diaries, correspondence, and plantation records, Jennison offers an in-depth examination of the evolution of racial ideologies and their impact on society in the lower South." --Book jacket.

From a common man's utopia to a planter's paradise, 1732-1776 -- The contagion of liberty, 1776-1804 -- The trans-Oconee republic, 1794 -- The state of Muskogee, 1799-1803 -- Borders of freedom, 1812-1818 -- Making Georgia black and white, 1818-1838 -- The democratization of slavery, 1820-1860 -- Rewriting Georgia's racial past, 1850s.