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Baptist the half has never been told7/1/2023 Soil, land, climate, rainfall and other environmental forces played more of a part in dictating cotton’s future than the entrepreneurial desires of the most rapacious slaveholders or the demands of the international markets…. The application of a capitalistic framework leaves out a whole lot of the history of slavery, and in fact works to the advantage of those who want us to believe in the invincibility of capital at the cost a whole host of other crucial factors, like agriculture and the environment, that played significant roles in the expansion of slavery. The rumblings that I am hearing over social media and elsewhere are probably best reflected in Jim Downs’s recent piece at the Huffington Post: I’ve read a number of important titles, but given the amount of scholarly output in the field over the past few decades I haven’t penetrated too far below the surface. Before saying anything I should point out that my understanding of the historiography of slavery is limited. I think I am beginning to get a grip on what some people find troubling about Edward Baptist’s new book, The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism.
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