The Business of Slavery and the Rise of American Capitalism, 1815-1860 (Yale University Press, 2015)

The Business of Slavery and the Rise of American Capitalism tells the story of capitalist development through seven slave-trading firms and related enterprises. It’s leading argument is that the business of slavery in the early U.S. republic charts the development of capitalism in terms of chains of credit and commodities, organization, and technology. The book argues that “Slave-traders . . . created integrated systems of supply and credit that anticipate concepts like vertical integration and supply-chain management a century later.”

A review from Enterprise & Society.

Here is a nice review of chapter 4: “Bank Bonds and Bondspersons”

Historian Walter Johnson calls it, “The best book ever written on role of the interstate slave trade in the economic history of the United States—both north and south.” It was a finalist for the inaugural Harriet Tubman Prize in Slavery and Abolition awarded by the Lapidus Center of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture at the New York Public Library. For more, please visit the companion site: The Business of Slavery Book

Yale Press: The Business of Slavery