This is not a real review. I think a real review would spend more time on the Good. This is more like my initial responses
to Slavery’s
Capitalism: A New History of American Economic Development edited by Sven
Beckert and Seth Rockman.
The good:
It is a good book. I learned a lot, and the essays
raise many interesting questions. Most of the authors use extensive research in
primary sources to provide new insights about slavery and American economic
development. Bonnie Martin, for instance, uses thousands of mortgage records to
illustrate the widespread use of slaves as collateral and the central role of
neighbor to neighbor credit. John Majewski examines the Limestone region of the
Upper South. He finds that, although the area was very productive and similar to
areas in free states just north of it, it exhibited the same low levels of
investment in education and relative dearth of innovative activity, as measured
by patents, as the rest of the South. The study thus fits in with work of
Sokolof and Engerman and Nunn on the negative long term effects of slavery. He also
explores the significance of these findings for our understanding of Republican
opposition to the spread of slavery.
Many of the essays raise interesting questions when considered
together. How does Rood’s picture of an innovative wheat and flour industry in
Virginia fit with Majewski’s picture of the South’s lag innovative activity?
How does Martin’s picture of lending dominated by personal transactions fit
with the accounts by Rothman and Boodry emphasizing more formal and
geographically dispersed credit markets?
These are just the first papers that came to mind; there are
plenty of other interesting papers in the book.
The Bad:
Bad may be too strong a word, but I’m sticking with so I can stick with the title of this post. Several of the authors run into problems
when they try to make claims about the relative importance of slavery to
American economic growth. The problems stem from the desire to show that
slavery was not just “a” significant or important part of the economy, but was
instead “everything” to New England, or “indispensable” to American economic
growth. These claims tend to emphasize the role of slavery in international
trade, which was large. The problem is that international trade itself was not
a large part of the economy. Cotton was more than half of exports, but it was
still only about 4-6 percent of GDP. It was thisproblem that led Ed
Baptist to tie himself in knots trying to expand its share of GDP.
Doug North’s Economic
Growth of the United States (1961) is cited by several of the authors
because it emphasizes both international and interregional trade, making cotton
exports the driving force behind antebellum growth. It seemed like a reasonable
story given the evidence that Doug had collected, but subsequent research
generated evidence that contradicted the theory. First, work by a number of
economic historians (Gallman, Hutchison and Williamson, and Herbst) found that
Doug’s theory tended to underestimate the degree of regional self-sufficiency
and overestimate the importance of interregional trade. Second, subsequent work
on early industrialization has emphasized the role of intraregional trade. Much
of early industrialization appears to have been directed at local demand.
Notable contributions on this subject were made by Diane Lindstrom Economic
Development in the Philadelphia Region and more recently by
David Meyer Roots
of American Industrialization or see his essay on Industrialization in
EH.Net’s Encyclopedia. In short, subsequent research did not support the
conclusion that cotton was the driving force behind economic growth. Doug acknowledged
the implications of this subsequent research in his later work, such as Growth and Welfare in the American Past.
Personally, I’m fine if you tell me an interesting story. It
does not need to be “the” story about “the” driving force behind American development.
But, to the extent that people do want
to make such claims, they need to address the work done by economic historians
since North’s Economic Growth of the
United States. Apparently, at the conference
that led to this volume Stanley Engerman raised questions about the extent of
the role of slavery in Northern development, but his paper does not appear in
the book.
The Ugly:
Hide your straw men; Ed Baptist is back in town.
He seems most intent on defending his indefensible book. In
terms of economic history, Baptist made two novel claims in his book: that
slavery was “the” driving force behind American growth and that increases in
productivity in the cotton South were driven by improvements in coercion, which
led to innovation in picking by enslaved people.
I have shown earlier that his attempt at a calculation of
the size of cottons role in the economy was nonsense. Fortunately, he does not
resurrect it in his essay. Instead, he focuses his energy on defending his
argument about productivity growth against the alternative interpretation put
forward by Rhode and Olmstead.
For those not familiar with the debate I think I can fairly
summarize it as follows
Olmstead and Rhode
argue:
Slave holders used physical coercion to force slaves to pick
large volumes of cotton as rapidly as possible. To increase the amount of
cotton that slaves were able to pick they also sought to improve cotton plants
so that a slave working at maximum effort could pick a larger volume of cotton.
They provide several types of evidence. First, they use evidence from picking
books to show that productivity increased. Second, they provide direct evidence
experimenting with seeds that planters worked to create improved varieties of
cotton (for example, descriptions of new seed varieties and planter’s records
of). Third, they argue that the fact that productivity growth was higher in
places where upland varieties were grown than in places where sea island cotton
was grown supports their argument because sea island cotton did not experience
the same improvements in seed varieties that upland cotton did.
Baptist argues:
Increases in physical coercion generated the improvements in
productivity over time. Slaveholders became better at pushing slaves and slaves
responded by becoming better at picking.
Baptist, acknowledges that some improvement occurred in
seeds but discounts the extent of it. He argues that the difference between sea
island and upland varieties is irrelevant because they operated under different
labor regimes. Sea island areas tend to use a task system rather than what he
refers to as a pushing system. In his essay in the book he reasserts this
argument and emphasizes that he believes spotted fundamental flaws in logic of
Rhode and Olmstead, Specifically, Baptist argues that the decline in production
and productivity after emancipation inconsistent with Olmstead and Rhode, but
consistent with his argument, and he claims that the very existence of the
picking books refutes Olmstead and Rhode.
Why I Don’t find
Baptist Persuasive
Baptist’s claim that the decline in
cotton production after emancipation is inconsistent with Rhode and Olmstead is
argument by misrepresentation. He is only able to make it by misrepresenting
their argument. For Rhode and Olmstead
productivity is a function of a number of things: the quality of the soil, the
quality of the plants, weather, and the ability to use violence to force
maximum effort from the slaves picking the cotton. Consider the following
excerpt from their 2008 paper in the Journal
of Economic History (By the way, can anyone tell me why Baptist continues
to cite the working paper almost a decade after the paper was published in a
journal?)
I think Olmstead and Rhode knew that brutality was an essential part of the planter's recipe for productivity. If you take away any ingredient in that recipe,
including the brutality, productivity would tend to fall. The
fall in picking rates after emancipation does not refute their argument, it is perfectly consistent with their
argument.
Baptist employs such argument by
misrepresentation througout his essay. He claims that Olmstead and Rhode “uncritically”
used the claims of people interested in selling new seeds to support their
claim and that the very existence of the picking books refutes Rhode and
Olmstead because planters recorded information about slaves and picking not
seeds. But, since Baptist claims to have read Olmstead and Rhode, he surely
knows that they used a variety of sources, including planter’s diaries that
recorded experiments with seeds. In a footnote he claims to refute Ransom and
Sutch’s argument that productivity actually increased after emancipation. They
arrived at this conclusion based upon their estimates of how much former slaves
dramatically reduced labor supply, especially of women and children. Baptist
argues they are wrong because photographs and testimony indicate that there
were still women and children working in the fields. But, Ransom and Sutch
never even remotely suggested that African American women and children joined
the leisure class after emancipation. Everybody worked, just not as much as
when they were coerced to work, a claim which seems like it should be
consistent with Baptist’s own argument. Finally, Baptist spends several pages
presenting himself as the defender of slave narratives as a historical source.
Who he is defending them from? Slave narratives have long been used by many
historians and even by economists like Olmstead and Rhode.
The biggest problem, however, is
not the weakness of Baptist’s critique of Olmstead and Rhode, it is his continued failure to provide any evidence in support of his own claim. He provides plenty of
evidence that slaves were whipped, as well as tortured in other ways, for not
meeting production quotas. He also provides evidence that quotas increased over
time. The problem is that we already knew both of those things, and they are both consistent with Olmstead and Rhode’s interpretation: Slaves were
forced pick at maximum effort, and the amount of cotton that could be picked
with maximum effort increased over time due to biological innovation. The
evidence that Baptist needs to support his argument is evidence of innovation
in two areas. The first type of innovation is improvements in methods of
physical coercion. He provides evidence that slaveholders kept records of daily
picking and whipped slaves for failing to meet quotas. But picking books
existed from at least the first decade of the nineteenth century. Moreover,
whipping was common well before cotton became the primary crop in the South and
was common outside cotton producing areas. If you have any doubts about the use
of whips outside the Cotton South, look at the runaway slave ads for eighteenth
century Virginia, you won't have to look far to find references to a runaway having a back that is
“well scarred” or with “many whelks” or “used to the whip.” Baptist needs to show that
slaveholders not only kept records and used physical coercion but that they did
these things better over time. And I am not talking about one planter getting
better as he becomes more experienced, I am talking about changes over decades,
changes that can be passed on from one planter to another. He dos not show this.
The second type of innovation that Baptist needs to demonstrate is innovation in picking techniques. Again, keep in mind that we are not talking about one person increasing their
productivity as they become more experienced, we are talking about increases in
productivity that take place decade after decade. Baptist’s argument is not
about particular people increasing their picking rates with practice. His
argument requires improvements in technique that can be passed on from one
generation to another. He does not provide any evidence of this passing on of
techniques. Ironically, his argument for the importance of slave narratives as
a source conflicts with his claim that innovation in coercion produced
innovation in picking. Not only does he not provide examples of narratives
describing these innovations in picking technique, many of the most well-known accounts, such as Charles Ball and Solomon Northrup, suggest that picking
productivity was largely a matter of practice and innate dexterity.
In the end, Baptist just throws out strawmen and
knocks them down, hoping that you won’t notice that he is not actually providing
the evidence that is needed to support his argument.
