Slavery’s Capitalism: A New History of American Economic Development

Abstract

Slavery's Capitalism explores the role of slavery in the development of the U.S. economy during the first decades of the nineteenth century. It tells the history of slavery as a story of national, even global, economic importance and investigates the role of enslaved Americans in the building of the modern world. Introduction. Slavery's capitalism / Sven Beckert and Seth Rockman -- Part 1. Plantation technologies. Toward a political economy of slave labor : hands, whipping-machines, and modern power / Edward E. Baptist -- Slavery's scientific management : masters and managers / Caitlin Rosenthal -- An international harvest : the second slavery, the Virginia-Brazil connection, and the development of the McCormick reaper / Daniel B. Rood -- Part 2. Slavery and finance. Neighbor-to-neighbor capitalism : local credit networks and the mortgaging of slaves / Bonnie Martin -- The contours of cotton capitalism : speculation, slavery, and economic panic in Mississippi, 1832-1841 / Joshua D. Rothman -- "Broad is de road dat leads ter death" : human capital and enslaved mortality / Daina Ramey Berry -- August Belmont and the world the slaves made / Kathryn Boodry -- Part 3. Networks of interest and the North. "What have we to do with slavery?" New Englanders and the slave economies of the West Indies / Eric Kimball -- "No country but their counting-houses" : the U.S.-Cuba-Baltic circuit, 1809-1812 / Stephen Chambers -- The coastwise slave trade and a mercantile community of interest / Calvin Schermerhorn -- Part 4. National institutions and natural boundaries. War and priests : Catholic colleges and slavery in the Age of Revolution / Craig Steven Wilder -- Capitalism, slavery, and the new epoch : Mathew Carey's 1819 / Andrew Shankman -- The market, utility, and slavery in Southern legal thought / Alfred L. Brophy -- Why did Northerners oppose the expansion of slavery? Economic development and education in the limestone South / John Majewski.