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208 reviews for:
The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism
Edward E. Baptist
4.47 AVERAGE
208 reviews for:
The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism
Edward E. Baptist
4.47 AVERAGE
informative
tense
slow-paced
challenging
dark
informative
sad
slow-paced
challenging
informative
slow-paced
This book is really essential reading. Covers the period from the beginning of slavery in what is now the U.S. to just after emancipation. Speaks about how the industrial revolution was supplied and maintained by the Atlantic slave trade, and how significant the slave trade was in birthing capitalism generally. Also speaks about the torture inflicted on African Americans, the arguments used to justify that torture, and the culture that grew out of their survival.
challenging
informative
medium-paced
Baptist dives deep into very specific details about the history of slavery in the US as well as the way slavery drove the economic engine, not just in the South, but in the entire country. He also explains how slavery shaped the politics of the nation, and hints at the beginnings of policies and attitudes that persist into contemporary US America. This was a really interesting book, even if the topic made it a bit dry. Well worth reading.
I can't star-rate this book. It's overwhelming, and at times excruciatingly boring (listen, bank development in the early US is maybe a topic of interest for some people, but not this non-scholar), but it's an argument. It's clear what Baptist is going for, and I think he makes his point. Our economic system was built by slaves. It's a hideous fact, but it seems unavoidable. At least this book makes it seem so. (And lest you think, duh! Of course! No, actually not. Apparently scholars have made every effort to put slavery in a box separate from every other aspect of our early history WHICH MAKES NO SENSE but there you go.)
God damn.
Describing the execution of Amar, one of the central figures of the 1811 slave revolt in the Lower Mississippi Valley:
"The militia stood Amar up in the yard at the Widow Charbonnet's place. Herded into an audience, the men, women, and children who knew him had to watch. The white men took aim and made Amar's body dance with a volley of lead. In his head, as he slumped and fell, were 50 billion neurons. They held the secrets of turning sugarcane sap into white crystals, they held the memories that made him smile at just such a joke, they held the cunning with which he sought out his lover's desires, they held the names of all the people who stood circled in silence. His cheek pressed on earth that his own feet had helped to pack, his mouth slackly coursing out blood, as gunpowder smoke gathered in a cloud and blew east. A white officer's sideways boots strode toward him. The dancing electrons in Amar's brain caressed forty-five years of words, pictures, feelings, the village imam with his old book, his mother calling him from the door of a mud-brick house. The memory of a slave ship or maybe more than one, the rumor of Saint-Domingue -- all this was there, was him -- but his cells were cascading into sudden death. One last involuntary wheeze as a soldier raised an axe sharpened by recent practice and severed Amar's head from his body" (65).
So after finishing this book (and after reading Ta-Nehisi Coates's article in the Atlantic this summer), I'm completely convinced of the need for the American government to start issuing reparations. The immensity of the crime perpetuated against African-Americans -- both under slavery and Jim Crow -- is nothing short of astonishing. Baptist's work really has illuminated a (forgive the pun) white-washed historical truth: that without the forced abduction, migration, and labor of millions of people, this country would have emerged in the 19th century as little more than a post-colonial backwater.
Describing the execution of Amar, one of the central figures of the 1811 slave revolt in the Lower Mississippi Valley:
"The militia stood Amar up in the yard at the Widow Charbonnet's place. Herded into an audience, the men, women, and children who knew him had to watch. The white men took aim and made Amar's body dance with a volley of lead. In his head, as he slumped and fell, were 50 billion neurons. They held the secrets of turning sugarcane sap into white crystals, they held the memories that made him smile at just such a joke, they held the cunning with which he sought out his lover's desires, they held the names of all the people who stood circled in silence. His cheek pressed on earth that his own feet had helped to pack, his mouth slackly coursing out blood, as gunpowder smoke gathered in a cloud and blew east. A white officer's sideways boots strode toward him. The dancing electrons in Amar's brain caressed forty-five years of words, pictures, feelings, the village imam with his old book, his mother calling him from the door of a mud-brick house. The memory of a slave ship or maybe more than one, the rumor of Saint-Domingue -- all this was there, was him -- but his cells were cascading into sudden death. One last involuntary wheeze as a soldier raised an axe sharpened by recent practice and severed Amar's head from his body" (65).
So after finishing this book (and after reading Ta-Nehisi Coates's article in the Atlantic this summer), I'm completely convinced of the need for the American government to start issuing reparations. The immensity of the crime perpetuated against African-Americans -- both under slavery and Jim Crow -- is nothing short of astonishing. Baptist's work really has illuminated a (forgive the pun) white-washed historical truth: that without the forced abduction, migration, and labor of millions of people, this country would have emerged in the 19th century as little more than a post-colonial backwater.
On a flippant note: I always love a book that's 20% endnotes.
On a serious note: hard to read at times, but so important.
On a serious note: hard to read at times, but so important.