The Business of Slavery and the Rise of American Capitalism, 1815-1860 – eBook

Calvin Schermerhorn’s stimulating study observes the development of modern American capitalism through the window of the nineteenth-century interstate slave trade. The Business of Slavery and the Rise of American Capitalism, 1815-1860, (PDF) follows ships and money as well as enslaved human beings to show how slavery was a national business supported by distant monetary and credit systems reaching across the Atlantic Ocean. The author details the anatomy of slave supply chains and the chains of commodities and credit that intersected with them in virtually every corner of the pre–Civil War United States and examines how an institution that destroyed lives and families influenced greatly the growth of the expanding republic’s capitalist economy.

978-0300192001, 978-0300213898

Reviews

“The best ebook is ever written on the role of the interstate slave trade in the economic history of the US—both north and south. Undeniably essential.” — Walter Johnson, author of River of Dark Dreams: Slavery and Empire in the Cotton Kingdom

“Historians have dedicated considerable attention to the domestic slave trade, but the strategy of looking at the evolution of representative slave-trading firms provides a fresh approach.” — John Majewski, University of California, Santa Barbara

“In this powerful ebook, Calvin Schermerhorn revolutionizes how we view the domestic slave trade. The commodification of enslaved Americans not only ran the southern economy but fueled capitalist development in the North and Europe. Marvelously written and tautly argued, this ebook is a singular achievement.” — Robert Gudmestad, author of Steamboats and the Rise of the Cotton Kingdom

“Devastating the myth of a neo-feudal, backward South, Calvin Schermerhorn skillfully reveals the entrepreneurial slave traders who helped to develop American capitalism. Cogent and clear, The Business of Slavery and the Rise of American Capitalism reveals the flow of humans, treated as commodities, passing through innovative conduits of transportation and finance to make up a nation’s perverse wealth.” — Alan Taylor, author of The Internal Enemy: Slavery and War in Virginia, 1772–1832

NOTE: The product only includes the ebook, The Business of Slavery and the Rise of American Capitalism, 1815-1860 in PDF. No access codes are included.