Vol 1 No 1 Spring 2017

Slavery and the New History of Capitalism

Charles Post

The New Historians of Capitalism (NHC) claim that their refusal to “define” capitalism is a historical and theoretical virtue. In reality, NHC do have a concept of capitalism — a system of trade, finance and extra-economic coercion and dispossession. Unfortunately, these social processes have existed trans- historically. The problems with such an approach are particularly evident when the NHC turns to the discussion of plantation slavery in the United States. Recent works by Johnson, Baptist and Beckert clearly establish that the southern planters had to “sell to survive” and were compelled to maximize profits. However, their confusion of capitalism with trade, finance and compulsion leads to numerous historical errors, an inability to analyze the specific dynamics of commercial plantation slavery and ultimately, to explain the origins of the US Civil War.

Walter Johnson: River of Dark Dreams: Slavery and Empire in the Cotton Kingdom.; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013. 526 pp. $35 cloth.

Edward Baptist: The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism.; New York: Basic Books, 2014. 498 + xxvii pp. $35 cloth.

Sven Beckert: Empire of Cotton: A Global History.; New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2014. 615 + xxii. $35 cloth. $35 cloth.

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