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The Half Has Never Been Told
The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism | Edward E. Baptist
10 posts | 15 read | 1 reading | 46 to read
Americans tend to cast slavery as a pre-modern institution—the nation's original sin, perhaps, but isolated in time and divorced from America's later success. But to do so robs the millions who suffered in bondage of their full legacy. As historian Edward Baptist reveals in The Half Has Never Been Told, the expansion of slavery in the first eight decades after American independence drove the evolution and modernization of the United States. In the span of a single lifetime, the South grew from a narrow coastal strip of worn-out tobacco plantations to a continental cotton empire, and the United States grew into a modern, industrial, and capitalist economy. Until the Civil War, Baptist explains, the most important American economic innovations were ways to make slavery ever more profitable. Through forced migration and torture, slave owners extracted continual increases in efficiency from enslaved African Americans. Thus the United States seized control of the world market for cotton, the key raw material of the Industrial Revolution, and became a wealthy nation with global influence. Told through intimate slave narratives, plantation records, newspapers, and the words of politicians, entrepreneurs, and escaped slaves, The Half Has Never Been Told offers a radical new interpretation of American history. It forces readers to reckon with the violence at the root of American supremacy, but also with the survival and resistance that brought about slavery's end—and created a culture that sustains America's deepest dreams of freedom.
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Kathrin
Kathrin
The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism | Edward E. Baptist
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Pickpick

#audiobook #hoopla

I learned a lot reading this book about the half that isn‘t discussed like this in the history books.

Slajaunie Not really. This was true only with the southern plantations. Steel, oil, and industrialization were bigger factors. 5y
Kathrin @Slajaunie The author makes a good case, that the north was able to build a diversified industry that was fueled my the slave laborers in the south. 5y
Slajaunie I understand. 5y
Centique This sounds fascinating. I‘ve heard this said too - and also for wider world economics, where the wealth from sugar plantations ended up for example. Stacking this for sure. 5y
Kathrin @Centique Yes, its also talked about how England profited off the slave labor. 5y
17 likes2 stack adds5 comments
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Kathrin
Kathrin
The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism | Edward E. Baptist
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13 likes1 stack add
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Valeka
Valeka
The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism | Edward E. Baptist
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When Jesmyn Ward mentions a book she read as part of her research for an upcoming project, you read the book!

Kathrin That's why I had the book on my TBR and now I finally started reading it. 6y
14 likes2 stack adds1 comment
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lindsayp
lindsayp
The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism | Edward E. Baptist
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Pickpick

My God.

review
OrangeMooseReads
OrangeMooseReads
The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism | Edward Baptist
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Pickpick

This was in depth and interesting. It‘s an important topic as well. For me the audio was hard to follow at times, but I‘m sure that was a me thing. I would have been better with an ebook or physical copy. Some of the information was in one ear and out the other.
More at OrangeMooseReads.wordpress.com

40 likes2 stack adds
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OrangeMooseReads
OrangeMooseReads
The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism | Edward Baptist
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Been listening to this one the last few days. Incredibly interesting, heartbreaking, and infuriating.

Louise There is so much learning that we all need to do in order to understand the true history of this country. Sounds like this book is a good one to add to the TBR. 7y
Emilymdxn I‘ve been really wanting to read this one for ages! So glad to hear people think it‘s a good book 7y
47 likes7 stack adds2 comments
review
Santiago
Santiago
The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism | Edward Baptist
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Pickpick

I think that typical narratives of American history treat slavery as a MacGuffin that may (or may not) have caused or motivated the Civil War. This book runs a counter-narrative, telling the story of America as the story of slavery, the slave trade, and the cotton trade through the Civil War. Cotton was king in the 1800's, and just what that means for our history is too often lost in the telling. You would do well to pick this up.

2 likes
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PlantyLibrarian
PlantyLibrarian
The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism | Edward Baptist
Pickpick

This book is a direct punch in the gut on why America is the way that it is - from its physical shape to its insatiable capitalist greed, even down to how our banks are structured as they are now. Slavery is what shaped this country. Slavery is what shaped the world. And it's still happening. This book is an education on the how and why and should be required reading for all.

9 likes
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PlantyLibrarian
PlantyLibrarian
The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism | Edward Baptist

But people, and indeed the world, can change from things as invisible and acts as ephemeral as words on the wind.

5 likes
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sharone
sharone
The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism | Edward Baptist
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"At five foot five, and built like a sweaty tank, [Stephen Douglas] managed with energy and invective to dominate a congress filled with taller, better looking, and better born men" (Ch. 10).

Thus may it be said of all of us--except for the sweaty tank part.

1 like