Review: The Half Has Never Been Told by Edward E. Baptist (original) (raw)
Related papers
University of Massachusetts Amherst, 2019
The publication of The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism by Edward Baptist was a mouthwatering development that significantly impacted the discourse analysis of America’s antebellum history. This book examines the macro-economics of slavery in United States history from a profoundly revisionist approach. It argues that the expansion of the institution of slavery created the wealth that financed the industrialization and modernization of the United States from 1783 to 1865. This challenges conventional interpretations that often portray slavery as a premodern economic institution largely isolated in time and detached from America’s socio-economic and political ideals and development that characterized the post-independence republic. This paper closely examines the methodological approaches and main arguments raised in chapters three, four and five of Baptist’s book. It argues that the full integration of the grim realities of the institution of slavery in these chapters is a sad tale of folly, a half that has now been told but that should be taken with a grain of salt.
Calvin Schermerhorn’s provocative study views the development of modern American capitalism through the window of the nineteenth-century interstate slave trade. This eye-opening history follows money and ships as well as enslaved human beings to demonstrate how slavery was a national business supported by far-flung monetary and credit systems. The author details the anatomy of slave supply chains and the chains of credit and commodities that intersected with them in virtually every corner of the pre–Civil War United States, and explores how an institution that destroyed lives and families contributed greatly to the growth of the expanding republic’s capitalist economy.
The Wealth of Nations: How Slavery Built the American Economy
Case Study, 2025
This case study examines the integral role that slavery played in shaping the economic foundation of the United States, particularly through industries such as cotton, sugar, and tobacco. It explores how enslaved labor not only fueled the Southern economy but also contributed to the growth of the industrial revolution in the U.S. and Europe. The study delves into the immense wealth generated by slavery, which extended beyond plantation owners to include financial institutions, corporations, and universities. It highlights the role of banks and insurance companies that profited from slavery and the long-term economic consequences for Black Americans, particularly in terms of generational wealth and systemic inequality. The case study also investigates how modern corporations and universities are addressing their historical ties to slavery, and the ongoing economic disparities that continue to affect Black communities today. By understanding the economic impact of slavery, this study emphasizes the importance of reparative actions to address the legacy of economic exploitation and work toward a more equitable future.
American Slavery and Its Repercussions
This essay will analyze the impact of slavery and its notorious legacy on ideals of ‘freedom’ and ‘equality’ through the respective works of Thomas Jefferson, Frederick Douglass, and James Baldwin. I will also lend my commentary support and contentions with each of these individuals as it is my position that slavery is an abomination; and more specifically, the United Sates’ history of chattel slavery has created serious concern for the concept of ‘justice.’
Slavery and the Rise of American Capitalism
Enterprise & Society, 2020
Slavery has deep roots in the rise of American capitalism, and two recent publications have made significant contributions toward our understanding of how human bondage shaped the growth of the United States’ economy in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Accounting for Slavery: Masters and Management, by Caitlin Rosenthal, and Slavery’s Capitalism: A New History of American Economic Development, edited by Sven Beckert and Seth Rockman, each explore traditionally overlooked aspects of slavery’s connection to business innovation and American capitalism and present readers with a fuller—and perhaps more complicated—narrative of the ties between enslavement and the economy.
Self-Published, 2023
The transatlantic slave trade was foundational to America's capitalist economy and enabled generational wealth for white enslavers. As examined in "Traces of the Trade," the trafficking of African peoples by Northern enterprises like the DeWolfs fueled early American prosperity (Rodman, 2010). This paper analyzes critical realities regarding slavery’s role in America’s development, its violent legacy of trauma, and the need for moral repentance. The whip became a cruel symbol of the dehumanizing institution of slavery in America. Its sharp crack echoed through plantations, tearing flesh and instilling fear, forcing enslaved Africans to labor under violent dehumanizing conditions. Even after the Civil War brought formal emancipation, the trauma of the whip lingered, imprinted in the epigenetics of family histories and community memories (Degruy-Leary, 2017). To move forward, America must reckon fully with this painful legacy. We need truth telling about the central role slavery played in building American wealth and power. And we need repentance - a national atonement - for the sins and harms of generations of whippings, beatings and other brutalities inflicted during chattel slavery. Without facing this painful history truthfully and working to right these historical wrongs, the scars of the whip still fall across our society today.
After slavery: strange fruits of aftermath
As my entry points to the ''strange fruits of aftermaths' in the title, I examine three documents, each written approximately 50 years apart. In reverse chronological order, they are a 1958 description of the funeral of a former family servant; a review of George Spring Merriam's 1906 volume, 'The Negro and the Nation'; and Abraham Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address of 1865. Together, these three documents illustrate different but interconnected strands of aftermath: 1) the construction of a nostalgic view of slavery which helped perpetuate notions of white supremacy; 2) the impact of scientific racism on the struggle for racial justice and 3) the construction of what Saidya Hartman has called the 'fiction of debt'. This paper is based on a chapter from my doctoral thesis, and is not currently published. Therefore, please do not cite it without my permission.