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Beckert and Rockman have provided a fantastic collection of essays with the intent and argument to situate the historical discussion of slavery in the economic institutions of capitalism in America. In order to accomplish this feat, both editors bring together a variety of essays and methodologies that incorporate everything from technological innovations like the McCormick Reaper to the finances of ledger building upon the plantation, connections between maritime traders and merchants from New England, and the early century push by Whig politicians for a true “American System”. Beckert and Rockman present a powerful case to situate the discussion of slavery not just as a social bondage institution that was limited to a southern planter aristocracy; it was in fact a powerful institution that encompassed northerners, southerners, and outside powers in an ever increasing push for expansion and profit. The sheer power of the slave’s investment capital not only determined the perspective of a southern planter, but the eyes of northern and southern bankers and creditors. I especially appreciated chapter one’s methodological discussion by Edward Baptist on how to deal with source material about slavery that can potentially come with heavy bias of the enslaved (who may have been influenced by abolitionists). Pages 48-49 give a detailed account of how historians can work around these fears and actually provide power back into sources that some may have questioned as abolitionist propaganda. At the same time, those pages provide a powerful defense of the quota argument for increases in the cotton output during the early 19th century.
Last week Robert discussed Gould’s argument for Americans pushing, in the years following both the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812, to be recognized as an equal nation on the world stage. At multiple points Beckert and Rockman have provided historical work that continues the narrative of America’s dependence on the mercantile world. Perhaps there is an argument to be made that the South’s expansion into the southwest and subsequent cotton explosion in the years following the War of 1812 provided the material necessary for Britain and other nations to finally start to take the United States seriously. While the essays that Beckert and Rockman do not definitively deal with this subject, it is clear that England, Spain, France, and even Russia had a lot to gain by the American’s increased trading patterns throughout the Atlantic and Caribbean that centered around slavery.