This important new book charts the economic and social rise and fall of a small, but intriguing part of the American South: Charleston and the surrounding South Carolina low country. Spanning 250 years, Coclanis's study analyzes the interaction of both external and internal forces on the city and countryside, examining the effects of various factors—the environment, the market, economic and political ideology, and social institutions—on the region's economy from its colonial beginnings to its collapse in the 19th and early 20th centuries.