Take a photo of a barcode or cover
207 reviews for:
The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism
Edward E. Baptist
4.48 AVERAGE
207 reviews for:
The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism
Edward E. Baptist
4.48 AVERAGE
The one thing giving me some hope amid the current backlash against "CRT" and anti-racism generally is that there are SO. MANY. WRITTEN. RECORDS. of what really happened and how earlier generations of Americans really felt about the system -- economic, governmental, and caste -- that built this country. This book was a slog at times but so, so worth it.
Powerful story of slavery, how it was the cornerstone for the economic system for the whole country. The brutality of slavery, its evolution as crops changed and the land expanded, continually grim. I see the country's history through a different lens now.
Though the book is filled with important information and I loved how he structured each chapter to coincide with a different part of the body, I found the writing to be dry and I often felt myself reluctant to read it (I exclusively read nonfiction so this was new to me).
I don’t think you can read this book and buy into the “civil war was more about state rights vs. federal power” or the idea that “a majority of slave owners were ‘good masters’” ideas that have been peddled (recalling some of my college classes here.) On the one hand it fills me with hope that legal slavery was defeated. On the other hand I’m overwhelmed with shame and anger over the beginnings of this country and how it was built on stolen years, lifetimes, bodies of African slaves. You can’t read this without being shocked at the depths of evil that existed here and being very sensitive to how that evil still exists here.
I think the part that surprised me most was this: I have always thought that Slavery was a southern problem. That the north righteously and persistently opposes slavery until it was abolished. Yet, the financial ties to the north, the cataloging in this book, of how northern mills also benefitted from millions of years of stolen labor, and were therefore also able to prosper.... it makes you realize why it did take SO LONG to abolish slavery. Money. Money is why. 😞
I think the part that surprised me most was this: I have always thought that Slavery was a southern problem. That the north righteously and persistently opposes slavery until it was abolished. Yet, the financial ties to the north, the cataloging in this book, of how northern mills also benefitted from millions of years of stolen labor, and were therefore also able to prosper.... it makes you realize why it did take SO LONG to abolish slavery. Money. Money is why. 😞
I don’t think you can read this book and buy into the “civil war was more about state rights vs. federal power” or the idea that “a majority of slave owners were ‘good masters’” ideas that have been peddled (recalling some of my college classes here.) On the one hand it fills me with hope that legal slavery was defeated. On the other hand I’m overwhelmed with shame and anger over the beginnings of this country and how it was built on stolen years, lifetimes, bodies of African slaves. You can’t read this without being shocked at the depths of evil that existed here and being very sensitive to how that evil still exists here.
I think the part that surprised me most was this: I have always thought that Slavery was a southern problem. That the north righteously and persistently opposes slavery until it was abolished. Yet, the financial ties to the north, the cataloging in this book, of how northern mills also benefitted from millions of years of stolen labor, and were therefore also able to prosper.... it makes you realize why it did take SO LONG to abolish slavery. Money. Money is why. 😞
I think the part that surprised me most was this: I have always thought that Slavery was a southern problem. That the north righteously and persistently opposes slavery until it was abolished. Yet, the financial ties to the north, the cataloging in this book, of how northern mills also benefitted from millions of years of stolen labor, and were therefore also able to prosper.... it makes you realize why it did take SO LONG to abolish slavery. Money. Money is why. 😞
The first half of this book was really good, unfortunately, the latter half of the book bored me to tears with its talk of the BUS and all the political jockeying around the expansion of slavery. I only finished the book (painfully) because I'm reading it for an upcoming class. I did learn a lot of new things, so the book wasn't a total dud, I just wish the last half of the book could have been condensed, clarified, and cut in half.
Fascinating, especially for it's psychoanalytic analysis in Chapter 4: Left Hand, though critical peer reviews have left me uncertain of is historiographic reliability.
There are lots of myths that float around about slavery in American history. Actually, “float around” is too vague - there are lots of myths that are promoted and believed by way too many people. I have gotten into arguments with people who declare the Civil War was not about slavery, but rather states rights. Yes, I often reply, states’ rights to OWN SLAVES!
One lesson I learned in this fantastic and detailed book is that my reply has often been too vague. It was not merely owning slaves which led to war, it was the desire of the south to expand slavery. I recall first learning this in other books (such as James MacPherson’s Battle Cry of Freedom), but it really clicked as I read here. There was no future for America divided between slave and free. Slave owners wanted their right to property to be ensured wherever they went. This would mean a slave owner could bring his slaves and continue to reduce people to property, in any state.
Ironically, the “states’ rights” argument falls apart when it is realized that actually, it was the rights of northern states to be free that was under attack.
There is a lot more in this dense history of slavery. Baptist shows that, again in contrast to often accepted ideas, slavery was not a more inefficient form of labor than free labor. Slavery would not just have petered out and ended. Instead, slavery is the foundation of the modern capitalist world. Slaves produced the cotton that fed industries on both sides of the Atlantic. Northern factories as well as British ones benefited from the enslavement of humans.
Perhaps a connection could be made to human trafficking and sweatshops that are largely ignored today but which are at the root of our consumerist, capitalist society. That’s another book...
This book, as I said, is dense. There were sections when Baptist got into the weeds of economics where I felt a bit lost. But overall, this seems to be the sort of book that, if you are an amateur interested in history and you want to develop a decent understanding of American history and slavery, you need to read.
One lesson I learned in this fantastic and detailed book is that my reply has often been too vague. It was not merely owning slaves which led to war, it was the desire of the south to expand slavery. I recall first learning this in other books (such as James MacPherson’s Battle Cry of Freedom), but it really clicked as I read here. There was no future for America divided between slave and free. Slave owners wanted their right to property to be ensured wherever they went. This would mean a slave owner could bring his slaves and continue to reduce people to property, in any state.
Ironically, the “states’ rights” argument falls apart when it is realized that actually, it was the rights of northern states to be free that was under attack.
There is a lot more in this dense history of slavery. Baptist shows that, again in contrast to often accepted ideas, slavery was not a more inefficient form of labor than free labor. Slavery would not just have petered out and ended. Instead, slavery is the foundation of the modern capitalist world. Slaves produced the cotton that fed industries on both sides of the Atlantic. Northern factories as well as British ones benefited from the enslavement of humans.
Perhaps a connection could be made to human trafficking and sweatshops that are largely ignored today but which are at the root of our consumerist, capitalist society. That’s another book...
This book, as I said, is dense. There were sections when Baptist got into the weeds of economics where I felt a bit lost. But overall, this seems to be the sort of book that, if you are an amateur interested in history and you want to develop a decent understanding of American history and slavery, you need to read.
Not long ago I read Sven Beckert’s massive “Empire of Cotton: A Global History” and possibly it was a mistake to to read that volume ahead of “The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism,” by Edward E. Baptist.
I say mistake because the climax of Beckert’s book is the response of the British textile industry to the disruption of the American Civil War. The British were making massive profits on relatively cheap cotton flowing out of America. Demand was enormous. The slave-based supply coming from America was enormous.
So they attempted to recreate the American system elsewhere in the world. They tried in Egypt. They tried in Africa. They pushed into the hinterlands of India and China. Each time they failed. Sometimes it was the climate but more often than not they failed because they didn’t have leverage with the local population that American slavedrivers had in the Deep South.
And Edward Baptist explains why.
Not only did American planters buy and terrorize their slaves with brute force but they used the inexhaustible supply of slaves to continually push into virgin land previously occupied by native Americans, clear the land, plant more and more cotton, finance their ventures with land and slave-secured mortgages, and pushed their slaves to ever higher levels of productivity.
At their peak in the years leading up to the Civil War slaves picked up to a billion pounds of cotton. Slave merchants moved the blacks around the country at first in chain gangs and later on the early railroads.
Baptist’s genius in telling this story is mixing in personal accounts of families broken as slaves were moved from one owner to the next. Enslaving these people, flaying their backs, raping their women, breaking up families. At each step of the way as the slaves were grounded in their new homes their communities were shredded.
American institutions both financial and political were consistently twisted to support the planters’ drive west to the Mississippi and beyond. As capitalism spread so spread the republic. And when the planters ran into financial headwinds they simply absconded on their debts and took their slaves to Texas.
This is what brought the annexation of Texas and might have brought the annexation of Cuba as well had the North not run out of patience finally over Kansas.
The aftermath of the Civil War — had it been played out today — might result in billions of reparations for the economic profits stolen from the slaves. Instead it was Reconstruction and the isolation of blacks in American society.
I say mistake because the climax of Beckert’s book is the response of the British textile industry to the disruption of the American Civil War. The British were making massive profits on relatively cheap cotton flowing out of America. Demand was enormous. The slave-based supply coming from America was enormous.
So they attempted to recreate the American system elsewhere in the world. They tried in Egypt. They tried in Africa. They pushed into the hinterlands of India and China. Each time they failed. Sometimes it was the climate but more often than not they failed because they didn’t have leverage with the local population that American slavedrivers had in the Deep South.
And Edward Baptist explains why.
Not only did American planters buy and terrorize their slaves with brute force but they used the inexhaustible supply of slaves to continually push into virgin land previously occupied by native Americans, clear the land, plant more and more cotton, finance their ventures with land and slave-secured mortgages, and pushed their slaves to ever higher levels of productivity.
At their peak in the years leading up to the Civil War slaves picked up to a billion pounds of cotton. Slave merchants moved the blacks around the country at first in chain gangs and later on the early railroads.
Baptist’s genius in telling this story is mixing in personal accounts of families broken as slaves were moved from one owner to the next. Enslaving these people, flaying their backs, raping their women, breaking up families. At each step of the way as the slaves were grounded in their new homes their communities were shredded.
American institutions both financial and political were consistently twisted to support the planters’ drive west to the Mississippi and beyond. As capitalism spread so spread the republic. And when the planters ran into financial headwinds they simply absconded on their debts and took their slaves to Texas.
This is what brought the annexation of Texas and might have brought the annexation of Cuba as well had the North not run out of patience finally over Kansas.
The aftermath of the Civil War — had it been played out today — might result in billions of reparations for the economic profits stolen from the slaves. Instead it was Reconstruction and the isolation of blacks in American society.