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

By Calvin Schermerhorn,

Book cover of The Business of Slavery and the Rise of American Capitalism, 1815-1860

Book description

Calvin Schermerhorn's provocative study views the development of modern American capitalism through the window of the nineteenth-century interstate slave trade. This eye-opening history follows money and ships as well as enslaved human beings to demonstrate how slavery was a national business supported by far-flung monetary and credit systems reaching across…

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Why read it?

1 author picked The Business of Slavery and the Rise of American Capitalism, 1815-1860 as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Much of the recent outpouring of books on the domestic slave trade is an outgrowth of revived debates about the historical relationship between slavery and capitalism in the United States. Calvin Schermerhorn draws that connection as tightly as any historian in recent memory, tracing the financial innovations generated by the trade and following the money around the country and across the Atlantic as a foundation for American economic growth was built on the backs of hundreds of thousands of enslaved people trafficked against their will.

From Joshua's list on the domestic slave trade.

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