Re: Capitalism and Slavery in the United States: Where Do We Stand? [discussion]
Recent scholarship expands the focus of slavery's capitalism from the foundational questions asked by scholars like Claudia Goldin and Gavin Wright. Edward E. Baptist's The Half Has Never Been Told (2014) exemplifies this shift in its comprehensive approach to "the making of American capitalism." Other recent literature taking the field in new directions includes:
Bonnie Martin, “Slavery's Invisible Engine:Mortgaging Human Property,” Journal of Southern History, 76 (November 2010): 817–866.
Joshua D. Rothman, Flush Times and Fever Dreams: A Story of Capitalism and Slavery in the Age of Jackson (Athens, Ga.: University of Georgia Press, 2012).
Sven Beckert, Empire of Cotton: A Global History (New York: Knopf, 2014), which historicizes global capitalism and explains the rise of U.S. slavery as an artifact of "war capitalism," which is akin to Walter Johnson's "slave racial capitalism" in his prize-winning River of Dark Dreams (2013).
Seth Rockman's foundational work includes his 2006 essay, "Unfree Origins of American Capitalism" and prize-winning Scraping By. Wage Labor, Slavery, and Survival in Early Baltimore (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009).
Beckert and Rockman are co-editing a collection featuring rising stars in the field like Kathryn Boodry and Caitlin C. Rosenthal, due out this year as Slavery's Capitalism (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press).
My work on the subject includes:
The Business of Slavery and the Rise of American Capitalism, 1815-1860 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2015)
“Slave Trading in a Republic of Credit: Financial Architecture of the United States Slave Market, 1815-1840,” Slavery & Abolition 36.3 (2015).
“Capitalism’s Captives: The Maritime United States Slave Trade, 1807-1850,” Journal of Social History 47.4 (Summer, 2014), 897-921.
And I must credit a classic work with great influence: Joseph C. Miller, Way of Death Merchant Capitalism and the Angolan Slave Trade (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1988), which uses chains of debt to explain the rise and transformation of the South Atlantic slave trade.
Calvin Schermerhorn
Arizona State University
Bonnie Martin, “Slavery's Invisible Engine:Mortgaging Human Property,” Journal of Southern History, 76 (November 2010): 817–866.
Joshua D. Rothman, Flush Times and Fever Dreams: A Story of Capitalism and Slavery in the Age of Jackson (Athens, Ga.: University of Georgia Press, 2012).
Sven Beckert, Empire of Cotton: A Global History (New York: Knopf, 2014), which historicizes global capitalism and explains the rise of U.S. slavery as an artifact of "war capitalism," which is akin to Walter Johnson's "slave racial capitalism" in his prize-winning River of Dark Dreams (2013).
Seth Rockman's foundational work includes his 2006 essay, "Unfree Origins of American Capitalism" and prize-winning Scraping By. Wage Labor, Slavery, and Survival in Early Baltimore (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009).
Beckert and Rockman are co-editing a collection featuring rising stars in the field like Kathryn Boodry and Caitlin C. Rosenthal, due out this year as Slavery's Capitalism (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press).
My work on the subject includes:
The Business of Slavery and the Rise of American Capitalism, 1815-1860 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2015)
“Slave Trading in a Republic of Credit: Financial Architecture of the United States Slave Market, 1815-1840,” Slavery & Abolition 36.3 (2015).
“Capitalism’s Captives: The Maritime United States Slave Trade, 1807-1850,” Journal of Social History 47.4 (Summer, 2014), 897-921.
And I must credit a classic work with great influence: Joseph C. Miller, Way of Death Merchant Capitalism and the Angolan Slave Trade (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1988), which uses chains of debt to explain the rise and transformation of the South Atlantic slave trade.
Calvin Schermerhorn
Arizona State University
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