n it reveals, thus presenting an interpretation of history that is at variance with the facts of Southern life.
Eugene Genovese represents his work as a humanistic-Marxian interpretation of the slave South. Martin Killian and Lynn Tatom contended, however, that Genovese's interpretations falsely minimize the terror, tragedy, racism, and economic exploitation of slavery, thereby losing the real life process of the master- slave relationship. Genovese contended, however, that the standard economic model of slave economies ignores the social relations of production that underlie the price of commodities on the market.
Herbert Shapiro wrote that the work of Eugene Genovese is widely perceived within and beyond the historical profession as a product of creative Marxist scholarship. Kenneth Hopkins stated that Genovese was designated as a regressive historian. Hopkins contended further that Genovese's work was affected by the turbulent 1960s and 1970s during which time much of the work was completed. Hopkins also stated that Genovese's ideology came from scholarship and colored his historical interpretations.
Genovese is not, however, without his supporters. Even critic Herbert Shapiro acknowledged that Roll, Jordan, Roll is regarded by many reviewers as a definitive benchmark in the historiography of slavery. Charles Davis and Henry Gates stated that "Eugene Genovese's masterful analysis of the 'black work ethic" with its careful and well selected sampling of evidence from master, nonslave-holders, and slave narrative presents a convincing argument." Genovese argued that slaveholders presided over a plantation system that constituted a halfway house between peasant and factory cultures.
Genovese on the Causes of the Civil War
While Eugene Genovese recognized the racial component of slavery in the American South, he contended that such slavery was in fact based on a paternalistic st...