Due to the richness of the materials and Baptist’s meticulous research, the book under review is large, entertaining, and rigorously argued.Ĭhapter 1, titled “Feet”-each subsequent chapter is named after a body part, a choice that, while adding to the book’s artistic value, does not necessarily foreshadow the content under discussion-describes the “unfree movement on paths to enslaved frontiers that were laid down between the end of the American Revolution in 1783 and the early 1800s” (p. The book covers a timeline from 1783 to 1861, with an introduction and afterword extending its reach until 1937. Baptist, who teaches at Cornell University and is the author of the award-winning Creating an Old South, continues his valuable series of elegantly crafted studies of slavery’s impact on the United States and its economic development and prosperity. With The Half Has Never Been Told, Edward E. In particular, this fine book anatomizes the relationship between slavery and the creation of American capitalism. The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism offers an ambitious and thorough account of how American capitalism was not an innate gift, but rather a system of gradual development, aiming to penetrate all aspects of the American public life. Oddly enough for a country that is considered the world’s preeminent capitalist nation, and despite the subject’s intrinsic interest and its remarkable academic value, never until now has the economics of slavery received the comprehensive historical treatment that it deserves. For decades, historians have portrayed slavery as an economically inefficient institution, viewing profit as a secondary incentive and not the driving force of capitalism in antebellum America. Talking about the financial benefits of slavery is like that awkward Thanksgiving dinner conversation that everyone at the table is trying to avoid.
Reviewed by Fatjon Kaja (City College New York) The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism.
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