Recent Capitalism and Slavery Stuff

The Junto has been hosting a weeklong series of posts about Slavery’s Capitalism. I blogged about the book here back in August. Part of the discussion in the comments section at the Junto has considered the use of terms like “essential.”

Speaking of “essential”, yesterday Dartmouth hosted what should have been a very interesting debate “Was Slavery Essential to Capitalism?” Doug Irwin was the moderator. Unfortunately, you had to be at Dartmouth to see it, but I heard from Irwin that the Chronicle of Higher Education planned to cover the debate. The participants were Alan Olmstead, Caitlin Rosenthal, Sven Beckert and Trevon Logan.

Speaking of Trevon Logan, I was re-reading his paper A Time (Not) Apart: A Lesson in Economic History from Cotton Picking Books, which I had assigned to my Economic History  class. For what it’s worth, I highly recommend the paper to economists and historians, as well as to people who aren’t economists or historians.