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Publications
Publications
  • 2016
  • Book

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

By: Sven Beckert and Seth Rockman
  • Format:Print
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Abstract

During the nineteenth century, the United States entered the ranks of the world's most advanced and dynamic economies. At the same time, the nation sustained an expansive and brutal system of human bondage. This was no mere coincidence. Slavery's Capitalism argues for slavery's centrality to the emergence of American capitalism in the decades between the Revolution and the Civil War. According to editors Sven Beckert and Seth Rockman, the issue is not whether slavery itself was or was not capitalist but, rather, the impossibility of understanding the nation's spectacular pattern of economic development without situating slavery front and center. American capitalism—renowned for its celebration of market competition, private property, and the self-made man—has its origins in an American slavery predicated on the abhorrent notion that human beings could be legally owned and compelled to work under force of violence.
Drawing on the expertise of sixteen scholars who are at the forefront of rewriting the history of American economic development, Slavery's Capitalism identifies slavery as the primary force driving key innovations in entrepreneurship, finance, accounting, management, and political economy that are too often attributed to the so-called free market. Approaching the study of slavery as the originating catalyst for the Industrial Revolution and modern capitalism casts new light on American credit markets, practices of offshore investment, and understandings of human capital. Rather than seeing slavery as outside the institutional structures of capitalism, the essayists recover slavery's importance to the American economic past and prompt enduring questions about the relationship of market freedom to human freedom.

Keywords

History; Development Economics; Ethics; Social Issues; United States

Citation

Beckert, Sven and Seth Rockman, eds. Slavery's Capitalism: A New History of American Economic Development. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016.
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More from the Authors

    • 2019
    • Faculty Research

    Harvard and Slavery: A Short History

    By: Sven Beckert, Balraj Gill, Jim Henle and Katherine May Stevens
    • 2018
    • Faculty Research

    Global History, Globally: Research and Practice Around the World

    By: Sven Beckert and Dominic Sachsenmaier
    • 2018
    • Faculty Research

    American Capitalism: New Histories

    By: Sven Beckert and Christine Desan
More from the Authors
  • Harvard and Slavery: A Short History By: Sven Beckert, Balraj Gill, Jim Henle and Katherine May Stevens
  • Global History, Globally: Research and Practice Around the World By: Sven Beckert and Dominic Sachsenmaier
  • American Capitalism: New Histories By: Sven Beckert and Christine Desan
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