Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Slavery, profitability, and the market process

  • Articles
  • Published:
The Review of Austrian Economics Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

The economic interpretations of the slave economies of the New World, as well as those social interpretations which adopt the neoclassical economic model but leave the economics out, assume everything they must prove. By retreating from the political economy from which their own methods derive, they ignore the extent to which the economic process permeates the society. They ignore, that is, the interaction between economics, narrowly defined, and the social relations of production on the one hand and state power on the other.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  • Aitken Hugh, ed. 1971.Did Slavery Pay? Readings in the Economics of Black Slavery in the United States. New York: Houghton Mifflin. 1971.

    Google Scholar 

  • Aptheker, Herbert. [1943] 1987.American Negro Slave Revolts. 5th ed. New York: Columbia University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bateman, Fred, and Thomas Weiss. 1981.A Deplorable Scarcity: The Failure of Industrialization in the Slave Economy. Chapel Hill, N.C.: University of North Carolina Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Butlin, Noel G. 1971.Ante-bellum Slavery—Critique of a Debate, Canberra: Australian National University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cairnes, John E. 1862.The Slave Power: Its Character, Career, and Probable Designs: Being an Attempt to Explain the Real Issues Involved in the American Contest, 2nd ed. New York: Carleton Publishers.

    Google Scholar 

  • Canarella, Giorgio, and John A. Tomaske. 1975. “The Optimal Utilization of Slaves.”Journal of Economic History 35, no. 3 (September): 621–29.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cobb, Thomas, R.R. 1858.An Inquiry into the Law of Negro Slavery in the United States of America, vol. 1. Philadelphia: T. & J. W. Johnson.

    Google Scholar 

  • Conrad, Alfred H., and John R. Meyer. 1958. “The Economics of Slavery in the Ante Bellum South.”Journal of Political Economy 65 (April): 95–130.

    Google Scholar 

  • ——. 1958. “Reply” to Douglas F. Dowd, “The Economics of Slavery in the Ante Bellum South: A Comment.”Journal of Political Economy 66 (October): 442–43.

    Google Scholar 

  • David, Paul A., et al., eds. 1976.Reckoning with Slavery: A Critical Study in the Quantitative History of American Negro Slavery. Introduction by Kenneth M. Stampp. New York: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • ——, and Peter Temin. 1979. “Explaining the Relative Efficiency of Slave Agriculture in the Antebellum South: A Comment.”American Economic Review 69 (March): 213–18.

    Google Scholar 

  • Davidson, Basil. 1961.The African Slave Trade: Precolonial History 1450–1850. Boston: Little, Brown. [Originally published in hardcover asBlack Mother.]

    Google Scholar 

  • Domar, Evsey. 1970. “The Causes of Slavery or Serfdom: A Hypothesis.”Journal of Economic History 30: 18–32.

    Google Scholar 

  • Dowd, Douglas F. 1958. “The Economics of Slavery in the Ante Bellum South: A Comment.”Journal of Political Economy 66 (October): 440–42.

    Google Scholar 

  • Earle, Carville V. 1978. “A Staple Interpretation of Slavery and Free Labor.”The Geographical Review 68: 51–65.

    Google Scholar 

  • Eaton, Clement. 1960. “Slave-Hiring in the Upper South: A Step Toward Freedom.”Mississippi Valley Historical Review 76, no. 4 (March): 663–78.

    Google Scholar 

  • Elkins, Stanley M. [1959] 1975.Slavery: A Problem in American Institutional and Intellectual Life. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Engerman, Stanley, and Eugene Genovese, eds. 1975.Race and Slavery in the Western Hemisphere: Quantitative Studies. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • England, J. Merton. 1943. “The Free Negro in Ante-Bellum Tennessee.”Journal of Southern History 9, no. 1 (February): 37–58.

    Google Scholar 

  • Evans, Robert, Jr. 1962. “The Economics of American Negro Slavery.” InAspects of Labor Economics. Princeton: National Bureau of Economic Research.

    Google Scholar 

  • Fenoaltea, Stefano. 1981. “The Slavery Debate: A Note from the Sidelines.”Explorations in Economic History 18: 304–8.

    Google Scholar 

  • Field, E. B. 1988a. “The Relative Efficiency of Slavery Revisited: A Translog Production Function Approach.”American Economic Review 78 (June): 543–49.

    Google Scholar 

  • —— 1988b. “Free and Slave Labor in the Antebellum South: Perfect Substitutes or Different Inputs?”Review of Economics and Statistics 70, no. 4 (November): 654–59.

    Google Scholar 

  • Fischer, David H. 1989.Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America. New York: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Fogel, Robert W. 1960.The Union Pacific Railroad: A Case in Premature Enterprise. Baltimore, Maryland: Johns Hopkins University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • ——. 1975. “Three Phases of Cliometric Research On Slavery and its Aftermath.”American Economic Review 65, no. 2 (May): 37–46.

    Google Scholar 

  • ——. 1989.Without Consent or Contract: The Rise and Fall of American Slavery. New York: W. W. Norton.

    Google Scholar 

  • Fogel, Robert W., and Stanley L. Engerman. 1974.Time on the Cross, Vol. I:The Economics of American Negro Slavery, Vol. II:Evidence and Methods: A Supplement. Boston: Little Brown.

    Google Scholar 

  • ——. 1977. “Explaining the Relative Efficiency of Slave Agriculture in the Antebellum South.”American Economic Review 67 (June): 275–96.

    Google Scholar 

  • ——. 1980. “Explaining the Relative Efficiency of Slave Agriculture in the Antebellum South: Reply.”American Economic Review 70, no. 4 (September): 672–90.

    Google Scholar 

  • Foust, James D., and Dale E. Swan. 1970. “Productivity and Profitability of Antebellum Slave Labor: A Micro-Approach.”Agriculture History 44 (January): 39–62.

    Google Scholar 

  • Fox-Genovese, Elizabeth, and Eugene D. Genovese. 1983.Fruits of Merchant Capital: Slavery and Bourgeois Property in the Rise and Expansion of Capitalism. New York: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Franklin, John Hope. 1956.The Militant South, 1800–1861. Cambridge, Mass.: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Genovese, Eugene. [1961] 1989.The Political Economy of Slavery: Studies in the Economy and Society of the Slave South. 2nd ed. Boston: Wesleyan University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Goldin, Claudia D. 1973. “The Economics of Emancipation.”Journal of Economic History 33 (March): 66–85.

    Google Scholar 

  • ——, and Frank Lewis. 1975. “The Economic Cost of the American Civil War: Estimates and Implications.”Journal of Economic History 35, no. 2 (June): 299–326.

    Google Scholar 

  • Govan, Thomas P. 1942. “Was Plantation Slavery Profitable.”Journal of Southern History 8 (November): 513–35.

    Google Scholar 

  • Grabowski, Richard, and Carl Pasurka. 1989. “The Relative Efficiency of Slave Agriculture: An Application of a Stochastic Production Frontier.”Applied Economics 21: 587–95.

    Google Scholar 

  • Grabowski, Richard and Carl Pasurka. 1991. “The Relative Efficiency of Slave Agriculture: A Replay.”Applied Economics 23: 869–70.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gray, Lewis Cecil. [1933] 1958.History of Agriculture in the Southern United States to 1860. Gloucester, Mass.: Peter Smith.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gunderson, Gerald. 1974. “The Origins of the American Civil War.”Journal of Economic History 34: 915–50.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gutman, Herbert G. 1975. “Slavery and the Numbers Game: A Critique ofTime on the Cross.” Champaign: University of Illinois Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Haskell, Thomas L. 1979. “Explaining the Relative Efficiency of Slave Agriculture in the Antebellum South: A Reply to Fogel-Engerman.”American Economic Review 69, no. 1 (March): 206–7.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hofler, Richard A. and Sherman Folland. 1991. “The Relative Efficiency of Slave Agriculture: A Comment.”Applied Economics 23: 861–8.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hurd, John Codman. 1862.The Law of Freedom and Bondage in the United States. Vol. 2. Boston: Little, Brown.

    Google Scholar 

  • Jordan, Winthrop D. 1962. “Modern Tensions and the Origins of American Slavery.”Journal of Southern History 28, no. 1 (February): 18–30.

    Google Scholar 

  • Law, Robin. 1991.The Slave Coast of West Africa, 1550–1750: The Impact of the Atlantic Slave Trade on an African Society. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lovejoy, Paul, E. 1983.Transformation in Slavery: A History of Slavery in Africa. Boston: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mathias, Frank F. 1973. “John Randolph's Freedmen: The Thwarting of a Will.”Journal of Southern History 39, no. 2 (May): 263–72.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mises, Ludwig von. [1949] 1966.Human Action: A Treatise on Economics. 3rd ed. New Haven: Yale University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • North, Douglass C. 1961.Economic Growth of the United States, 1790–1860. New York: Prentice-Hall.

    Google Scholar 

  • --. 1965. “The State of Economic History.”American Economic Review 55 (May).

  • Parker, William N., ed. 1970.The Structure of the Cotton Economy of the Antebellum South. Chapel Hill, N.C.: University of North Carolina Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Passell, Peter, and Gavin Wright. 1972. “The Effects of Pre-Civil War Territorial Expansion on the Price of Slaves.”Journal of Political Economy 80 (November–December): 1188–1202.

    Google Scholar 

  • Phillips, Ulrich B. [1918] 1929.American Negro Slavery: A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime. Gloucester, Mass.: Peter Smith.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ramsdell, Charles W. 1929. “The Natural Limits of Slavery Expansion.”Mississippi Valley Historical Review 16, no. 2 (September): 151–71.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ransom, Roger L. 1989.Conflict and Compromise: The Political Economy of Slavery, Emancipation, and the American Civil War. Boston: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rogers, Sam L. 1918.Negro Population: 1790–1915. Washington, D.C.: Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rosengarten, Theodore. 1986.Tombee: Portrait of a Cotton Planter, with the Journal of Thomas B. Chaplin (1822–1890). New York: William Morrow.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rothbard, Murray N. 1982.The Ethics of Liberty. Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Humanities Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Russel, Robert R. 1938. “The General Effects of Slavery upon Southern Economic Progress.”Journal of Southern History 4 (February): 34–54.

    Google Scholar 

  • —— 1941. “The Effects of Slavery on Nonslaveholders in the Ante-Bellum South.”Agriculture History 15 (April): 112–26.

    Google Scholar 

  • Saraydar, Edward. 1964 “A Note on the Profitability of Ante Bellum Slavery.”Southern Economic Journal 30, no. 4 (April): 325–32.

    Google Scholar 

  • Schaefer, Donald F. and Mark D. Schmitz. 1979. “The Relative Efficiency of Slave Agriculture: A Comment.”American Economic Review 69 (March): 208–12.

    Google Scholar 

  • Scott, John Anthony. 1984. “Segregation: A Fundamental Aspect of Southern Race Relations, 1800–1860.”Journal of the Early Republic 4 (Winter): 421–41.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sirmans, M. Eugene. 1962. “The Legal Status of the Slave in South Carolina, 1670–1740.”Journal of Southern History 28, no. 4 (November): 462–74.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sowell, Thomas. 1980.Knowledge and Decisions. New York: Basic Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Stampp, Kenneth M. [1956] 1989.The Peculiar Institution: Slavery in the Ante-Bellum South. New York: Vintage Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sutch, Richard. 1965. “The Profitability of Ante Bellum Slavery-Revisited.”Southern Economic Journal 31 (April): 365–77.

    Google Scholar 

  • ——. 1975. “The Breeding of Slaves for Sale and the Westward Expansion of Slavery, 1850–1860.” In Stanley Engerman and Eugene Genovese, eds.Race and Slavery in the Western Hemisphere: Quantitative Studies. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • ——. 1982. “Douglass North and the New Economic History.” InExplorations in the New Economic History: Essays in Honor of Douglass C. North. Roger Ransom, Richard Sutch, and Gary Walton, eds., New York: Academic Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Thompson, E.T. 1941. “The Climatic Theory of the Plantation.”Agricultural History 15, no. 1 (January).

    Google Scholar 

  • Turtle, Gordon B. 1991.Slave Manumission in Virginia, 1782–1806: The Jeffersonian Dilemma in the Age of Liberty. Masters Thesis. University of Alberta.

  • Tushnet, Mark. 1981.The American Law of Slavery, 1810–1860: Consideration of Humanity and Interest. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Vedder, Richard K., and David C. Stockdale. 1975. “The Profitability of Slavery Revisited: A Different Approach.”Agricultural History 44, no. 2 (April): 392–404.

    Google Scholar 

  • Williams, Eric. [1944] 1980.Capitalism and Slavery. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, Perigee Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Woodman, Harold D. 1963. “The Profitability of Slavery: A Historical Perennial.”Journal of Southern History 29: 303–25.

    Google Scholar 

  • —— ed. 1966.Slavery and the Southern Economy: Sources and Readings. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wright, Gavin. 1973. “New and Old Views on the Economics of Slavery.”Journal of Economic History 33 (June): 452–56.

    Google Scholar 

  • ——. 1979. “The Efficiency of Slavery: Another Interpretation.”American Economic Review 69 (March): 219–26.

    Google Scholar 

  • Yanochik, Mark, A. 1993.The Patrol System and Its Effect on the Profitability of Ante-Bellum Slavery. Masters Thesis. Auburn University.

  • Yasuba, Y. 1961. “The Profitability and Viability of Plantation Slavery in the United States.”The Economic Studies Quarterly 12 (September): 60–67.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Auburn University and the Ludwig von Mises Institute, USA

    Mark Thornton (Assistant Professor)

Authors
  1. Mark Thornton
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Additional information

The author would like to thank the Institute for Humane Studies at George Mason University and the Ludwig von Mises Institute for financial support of this research. Audrey Davidson, Robert Ekelund, Gerald Gunderson, David Laband, Randall Parker, Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr., Richard Steckel, and Keith Watson provided useful comments and suggestions. Special thanks to Eugene Genovese, Robert Higgs, Murray Rothbard, and three anonymous referees for their comments.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Thornton, M. Slavery, profitability, and the market process. Rev Austrian Econ 7, 21–47 (1994). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01101941

Download citation

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01101941

Keywords

Search

Navigation