Masters of Small Worlds Review - Book Report/Review Example

This paper will review the book ‘Masters of Small Worlds’ by Stephanie McCurry with the sole aim of explaining the central argument of the author. The paper will also compare and contrast the views of Stephanie McCurry with the views of other authors. The paper will finally judge this book and the thesis of the author. Masters of Small Worlds explores the relationship between planters and Yeomen from a modern perspective. The country that the author had selected to carry out her study is the low country of South Carolina.

By selecting this region, it is worth noting that the author reveals the existence of a class of people in Yeomen that has been ignored for a very long time in history. The author also manages to contrast the social and political motivations of the Yeomen people with the aristocracy of the planters which is economically dominant. In my opinion, the author has done a great job in talking about a tribe that is not so popular. The tribe seems to have been forgotten and ignored for a long time in history.

In the book, the author brings to our attention the fact that the Yeomen have always been looking for one republican democracy and not to have an egalitarian society. According to McCurry, the Yeomen were masters of their own domain. They played a very important role in the 1860 secession that took place in South Carolina. The author is right because the Yeomen people are historically known to defend their own identity, hence the phrase “masters of small worlds” (McCurry, p. 306). The author has done a great job at supporting all the claims, arguments and propositions that she has made in the book.

She has provided a lot of evidence that seems to explain why she has taken the positions that she has taken in her book. The first instance that this can be seen is where the author has identified her study group (McCurry, p. 6). She has decided to focus on a specific group of people, the Yeomen of South Carolina. This group is an important group to study because according to the author, the group was previously invisible and ignored. The author has managed to do a good job in showing how the Yeomen people have emerged as a numerically significant and cohesive class of people.

She uses court records and census documents to prove this fact and this is seen to strengthen her argument in the book (McCurry, p. 24). The author further notes that she selected the Yeomen people of South Carolina because their region has a very unique geography that makes the Yeomen to be placed next to the planters. It is this proximity between the Yeomen and the planters that facilitated and necessitated their interaction. The author’s argument purely focuses on the structure of the Yeomen families and the plantations which are said to have a patriarchal structure.

There are numerous examples that have been cited by the author to compare and contrast the social relationship between the planters and the Yeomen. One example is where the author illustrates that the authority of the estates of both the Yeomen and the planters was in the hands of the white males. The author proceeds to note that the similarity in the structure of authority allowed the elites to manipulate Yeomen people to support the political stances of the planters (McCurry, p. 201). In the book, the author is seen insisting that women are very central in their role as historical actors.

This is also revealed when gender is looked at as a category of analysis. The book also shows that the political