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Sign up todaySlavery’s Capitalism
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Learn moreDuring 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.
Contributors: Edward E. Baptist, Sven Beckert, Daina Ramey Berry, Kathryn Boodry, Alfred L. Brophy, Stephen Chambers, Eric Kimball, John Majewski, Bonnie Martin, Seth Rockman, Daniel B. Rood, Caitlin Rosenthal, Joshua D. Rothman, Calvin Schermerhorn, Andrew Shankman, Craig Steven Wilder.
Sven Beckert is the Laird Bell Professor of American History at Harvard University. Holding a PhD from Columbia University, he has written widely on the economic, social, and political history of capitalism. He has been the recipient of numerous awards and fellowships, including, from Harvard Business School, the Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library, and the Charles Warren Center for Studies in American History. He was also a fellow of the American Council of Learned Societies and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.
Seth Rockman is associate professor of history at Brown University.
William Hughes is a professor of political science, jazz guitarist, and an actor and narrator. Books he has narrated include FDR: The First Hundred Days by Anthony J. Badger, Brothers, Rivals, Victors by Jonathan W. Jordan, and Lincoln’s Spymaster by David Hepburn Milton.
Kevin Kenerly, an Earphones Award–winning narrator, earned a BA at Olivet College. A longtime member of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, he has acted in more than twenty seasons, playing dozens of roles.
Bahni Turpin is an ensemble member of the Cornerstone Theater Company in Los Angeles. She has guest starred in many television series, including NYPD Blue, Law & Order, Six Feet Under, Cold Case, What About Brian, and The Comeback. Her film credits include Brokedown Palace, Crossroads, and Daughters of The Dust. Ms. Turpin won the Odyssey Award for The True Meaning of Smekday by Adam Rex. She has also received many AudioFile Earphones Awards for her unforgettable narration, including one for Precious by Sapphire, and for the National Book Award finalist and Oprah Book Club Pick The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead. She's also a member of the cast recording of The Help, which won numerous awards.
Pam Ward has had many incarnations, including private detective, classical musician, television talk-show host, and actress, having performed in dinner theater, summer stock, and Off-Broadway, as well as in commercials, radio, and film. But she found her true calling reading books for the blind and physically handicapped for the Library of Congress Talking Books program, for which she received the prestigious Alexander Scourby Award from the American Foundation for the Blind. An AudioFile Earphones Award winner, her many audiobooks include Dancing in the Streets by Barbara Ehrenreich, Breaking Free by Lauraine Snelling, The Second Journey by Joan Anderson, and Lion in the White House by Aida D. Donald. She now records from her studio amidst the beauty of the Southern Oregon mountains.
Ron Butler is a Los Angeles–based actor, Earphones Award–winning narrator, and voice artist with over a hundred film and television credits.
Reviews
“Reveals the inextricable links between the enslavement of people of African descent and today’s global economy.”
“The centrality of slavery to the economic development of the United States is revealed here more fully, in more dimensions, than in any other book.”
“Some of the best work in one of the hottest fields in American history.”
“Provides the perfect opportunity to take stock of what was accomplished in the last round of historicization…The book both incorporates and builds on a wave of recent scholarship on slavery and capitalism in the United States.”
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