Slavery’s Capitalism: A New History of Economic Development Edited by Sven Beckert and Seth Rockman

Abstract

For nineteenth-century Americans, it was clear that slavery was a key component of the nation’s capitalist economy. Until recently, however, scholars have not been as quick to recognize the interconnections between national economic development and slavery. The essays in this volume, which originated in a 2011 conference on “Slavery’s Capitalism” at Brown University, go a long way toward correcting this oversight. They complement a growing literature that shows how central slavery was to the economic growth of the entire United States, and provide perhaps the most wide-ranging assessment yet of the complex relationship between slavery and capitalism.