The Half Has Never Been Told (slavery And The Making Of American Capitalism)

Description

By (author) Edward E. Baptist; By (author) Baptist Edward E.

Short /annotation:
“In this assiduously researched and tightly argued volume, Baptist gives us what is by far the finest account of the deep interplay of the slave trade (especially within the nation”s borders) and the development of the U.S. economy.”-Bloomberg View, Top Ten Nonfiction Books of 2014

:
Americans tend to cast slavery as a pre-modern institution,the nation”s original sin, perhaps, but isolated in time and divorced from America”s later success. But to do so robs the millions who suffered in bondage of their full legacy. As historian Edward E. Baptist reveals inThe Half Has Never Been Told , the expansion of slavery in the first eight decades after American independence drove the evolution and modernization of the United States. In the span of a single lifetime, the South grew from a narrow coastal strip of worn-out tobacco plantations to a continental cotton empire, and the United States grew into a modern, industrial, and capitalist economy. Told through intimate slave narratives, plantation records, newspapers, and the words of politicians, entrepreneurs, and escaped slaves,The Half Has Never Been Toldoffers a radical new interpretation of American history. Winner of the 2015 Avery O. Craven Prize from the Organization of American HistoriansWinner of the 2015 Sidney Hillman Prize Bloomberg ViewTop Ten Nonfiction Books of 2014 Daily BeastBest Nonfiction Books of 2014

Table of contents:
Introduction: The Heart, 19371. Feet 1783-18102. Heads 1791-18153. Right Hand 1815-18194. Left Hand 1805-18615. Tongues 1819-18246. Breath 1824-18357. Seed 1829-18378. Blood 1836-18449. Backs 1839-185010. Arms 1850-186111. Afterword: The Corpse 1861-1937Acknowledgments Abbreviations Notes Index

Review quote:
Wall Street Journal “Abolitionists were contemptuous of such self-serving nonsense, but they too tended to see slavery as an economically inefficient, and morally reprehensible, hangover from the premodern past… In The Half Has Never Been Told, Edward E. Baptist takes passionate issue with such assumptions. He asserts that slavery was neither inherently inefficient nor a counterpoint to capitalism. Rather, he says, it was woven inextricably into the transnational fabric of early 19th-century capitalism… Baptist writes with verve and a good eye for the dramatic.” New York Times Book Review “Baptist”s work is a valuable addition to the growing literature on slavery and American development… Baptist has a knack for explaining complex financial matters in lucid prose… The Half Has Never Been Told”s underlying argument is persuasive.” Vikas Bajaj, New York Times “New books like Empire of Cotton and The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism by Edward Baptist offer gripping and more nuanced stories of economic history.” Los Angeles Times “The overwhelming power of the stories that Baptist recounts, and the plantation-level statistics he”s compiled, give his book the power of truth and revelation.” Daily Beast “Thoughtful, unsettling… Baptist turns the long-accepted argument that slavery was economically inefficient on its head, and argues that it was an integral part of America”s economic rise.” Nation “Wonderful… Baptist provides meticulous, extensive, and comprehensive evidence that capitalism and the wealth it created was absolutely dependent on the forced labor of Africans and African-Americans, downplaying culturalist arguments for Western prosperity.” Providence Journal Best Books of 2014 “Baptist”s exhaustively researched, elegantly written and provocatively argued book details the connection between the growth of the institution of human bondage and economic innovations from 1783–1861.” Guardian Australia Best Books of 2014 “A compelling case for recognizing slavery as fundamental to the rise