\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 In this collection of articles, editors Sven Beckert and Seth Rockman put forth the argument that in contrast to more popular assertions, slavery came to hold a role of central importance in the development of not just American capitalism in the nineteenth century, but in the development of global capitalism. They argue that capitalism expanded from within the world market that it had created, and then came to play a central, decisive, role first in the Caribbean and Latin America, and then in North America where it had close ties to the Industrial Revolution and, as Robert points out, the Great Divergence (P. 3). <\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0As dshanebeck, points out, a number of methodologies are used by the various authors of this book, giving a broad and multidimensional approach to the topic at the hand. The division of the book into four parts, with three or four articles being grouped around a further subdivision of the \u201cslavery as a constitutive element of capitalism\u201d (P. 5) argument allows for a number of scholars to provide succinct, specialized accounts of aspects of slavery that support Beckert and Rockman\u2019s argument. For instance, the book includes chapters ranging from a discussion revolving around the creation of a mechanized piece of machinery, the McCormick reaper, \u00a0in Rood\u2019s chapter, to a detailed look into more than 10,000 loans from three southern states (P. 108) in Martin\u2019s chapter in order to show slavery as being a system of finance. There are also biographical works, in Boodry and Shankman\u2019s chapters, and as morgonstocks points out, in Majewski\u2019s chapter an article focusing on education as a means of illustrating the impact slavery had on America\u2019s developing economy. All of this had the effect, at least on a personal level, of making the book feel \u201cfresh.\u201d It never gets bogged down in dwelling on a certain subject, and the idea of encountering a new topic, scholar, and methodology created the desire to continue on and see how the next article would support the overarching thesis of the book itself. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 One chapter that I found particularly interesting was Stephen Chambers\u2019 piece \u201cNo Country but their counting-houses.\u201d Right off the bat, the first sentence grabbed my attention. He states, \u201cCuban slavery impacted early American capitalism through Russia\u201d (P. 195). Upon first glance, at least it certainly did to me, this sentence seems to be incredibly confusing. How any of these things were related to one another, let alone help build American capitalism, was beyond me. However, Chambers proceeds to unravel this mystery, illustrating how American capitalism was dependent on reliable reexport markets for Cuban sugar and coffee (P. 197). However, following the Napoleonic Wars, trade restrictions effectively barred American ships from continental Europe, so they looked to the Baltic for these reexport markets (P. 199). I found the entire story of John Quincy Adams\u2019 trip to St. Petersburg, coupled with the accounts of the various other diplomats, agents, and merchants incredibly interesting and compelling. I also found that it greatly supported the globalized capitalism argument that is put forth. <\/span>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0In conclusion, I feel that this book continues with the trend of the other readings we have done so far of forcing the reader to think about an aspect of nineteenth century America, and to analyze it and see it in a new light. In <\/span>H\u00e4m\u00e4l\u00e4inen, it was the idea of empire and Native American agency. In Gould, it was the idea of what true independence was and where it came from. And now, in Beckert and Rockman\u2019s book, we are forced to rethink slavery and investigate not just its political ramifications, but the ramifications it had on the development of an incredibly important global economic system. <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 In this collection of articles, editors Sven Beckert and Seth Rockman put forth the argument that in contrast to more popular assertions, slavery came to hold a role of central importance in the development of not just American capitalism in the nineteenth century, but in the development […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":32,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-150","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/hist571-fall2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/hist571-fall2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/hist571-fall2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/hist571-fall2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/32"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/hist571-fall2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=150"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/hist571-fall2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":151,"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/hist571-fall2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150\/revisions\/151"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/hist571-fall2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=150"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/hist571-fall2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=150"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/hist571-fall2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=150"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}