A review of Burden of Dependency: Colonial Themes in Southern Economic Thought (Johns Hopkins, 1992) by Joseph Persky
An Under-Appreciated Book
In 1973, the young economist Joseph J. Persky wrote piece in Southern Exposure with a promising title: “The South: A Colony at Home.” He recalls thinking at the time that he was in “some sort of “vanguard.”[1] I read the piece when it came out and made a note to watch for further work by Persky. Meanwhile, he discovered that he was going over well-trodden ground,[2] but stuck with his topic, producing in 1992 a powerful treatment of the theme of the South as an internal colony.
I’m afraid I missed the arrival of his book and only stumbled on it recently. Having caught up, I can say that it is evenhanded, scholarly, and focused, even if destined to annoy the friends of what we might call Official Free Trade. A quick survey on a dreaded “search engine” turns up few reviews of the book. On the other hand, we find it much cited in the literature on dependency studies. What the book lacks in Germanic bulk, it makes up for with concise and well-executed analysis.
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