Over the past few decades the conceptual metaphors of time, space, and labor have been an organizing focus of the geohistorical discourse of social change. This essay explores the involvement of contested time and labor in shaping the fragmented social geographies of the late antebellum American South. The examination is focused on the intraregional differentiation of time and labor systems and on their ramifications for the development of agrarian capitalism in the context of southern plantations. The descriptive and analytical evidence supports the new staple theory. The physical character of staple crops such as cotton, sugar, tobacco and rice made determinant influences on cultivation methods, seasonal routines, labor organizations, mentalite, and the development of plantation capitalism.

This essay looks at the patterns of pawning in Germany in the decades preceding the First World War. It tries to present pawning and thus also the economy of nineteenth-century working-class households in a new light. Contrary to the generally accepted view of social historians, it is unlikely that pawning served to secure the proletarian household in periods of real hardship. There is much evidence that pawning was only considered when it seemed very likely that the borrower would be able to redeem the pledge in due course. It was therefore part of a rather stable economic situation. Insecurity of prospects persuaded people to refrain from pawning. Pawnshops thrived not on working-class destitution, but on the very modest “affluence” proletarian families were able to achieve in the era of industrialization. The striking differences between the patterns of pawning in Germany and in Great Britain therefore point to significant differences in proletarian standards of living between the two societies in question.

This articles argues that it was primarily cash, rather than culture, that shaped employment decisions by Cornish miners in the mid-nineteenth century. Although their occupation cut their lives short, total lifetime earnings as a metal miner, at home or abroad, exceeded the probable income from readily available alternative employment, even over a longer working life. In economic terms, Cornish miners rationally sold part of their lives for both higher short- and long-term incomes.