A School for Politics: Commercial Lobbying and Political Culture in Early South Carolina (review)

A School for Politics: Commercial Lobbying and Political Culture in Early South Carolina. By Rebecca Starr (Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998) 218 pp. $45.00

The "problem" of South Carolina has long fascinated students of American politics. To most, the alleged extremism of Palmetto State politics and politicians needs explanation. What accounts for the fact that both nullification and secession were so closely linked to South Carolina? Whence did Palmetto pols such as John C. Calhoun, Robert Barnwell Rhett, "Pitchfork Ben" Tillman, Cole Blease, "Cotton Ed" Smith, and Strom Thurmond spring? Various answers have been offered over the years, ranging from the centrality of race to the legacy of republicanism. Starr's original new approach to this old problem redirects our attention to hitherto underappreciated issues and themes.

Although Starr does not reject earlier approaches entirely, she argues that scholars have been too quick to find psychological (for example, racial fears) and ideological explanations of South Carolina politics, without first grounding themselves in the practices, conventions, methods, and usages informing political culture in the province/state. As a result, scholars have overlooked important issues and failed to impart a sense of process to South Carolina's political evolution. Starr, however, employs a (currently unfashionable) behavioral approach. She finds that a key--perhaps the key--to what she calls the "'South Carolina model' of political problem-solving" grew out of practices associated with commercial lobbying, which Carolina planters and merchants pursued with both vigor and considerable success beginning in the early eighteenth century (4). In her view, the mindset, strategies, and tactics needed for informal, interest-group lobbying of the British government--an orientation toward practical results and a suspicion of theory; a belief in unanimity and at least the appearance of internal unity; and an aggressive, self-consciously confrontational style--were gradually transferred from the commercial to the political realm, leaving an indelible imprint on the political culture of South Carolina. Understanding South Carolina politics--including its much remarked "harmony" and its purported extremism--requires understanding how eighteenth-century Carolinians and their commercial allies in Britain, via lobbying, protected and promoted their mutual "interest" in rice, indigo, and slaves.

Starr makes a solid case in this short book that the experience and conventions of commercial lobbying made an important contribution to South Carolina's political tradition. She has found some new, or at least underutilized, materials, particularly relating to Carolina-Bristol commercial-lobbying networks, and employed them creatively to support her thesis. Moreover, she makes valuable and original observations about the similarities and differences between political developments in South Carolina and other British colonies, finding striking and surprising parallels between developments in Jamaica and South Carolina. Finally, she deserves praise for pumping new life into the undervalued behavioral approach to politics. If the evidentiary base upon which she makes her case is scattered rather than complete, and suggestive rather than definitive, Starr's monograph is, nonetheless, a provocative addition to the literature about the problematic political history and culture of South Carolina.

Peter A. Coclanis
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

...