Slavery and American Economic Development [Recurso electrónico] / Gavin Wright.

Issued as part of book collections on Project MUSE.

Includes bibliographical references (p. 135-151) and index.

Preface -- Introduction : what was slavery? -- 1. Slavery, geography, and commerce -- 2. Property and progress in antebellum America -- 3. Property rights, productivity, and slavery -- Epilogue : the legacy of slavery -- Appendix -- Works cited -- Index.

Libro Electrónico

Through an original analysis of slavery as an economic institution, Gavin Wright presents a fresh look a the economic divergence between North and South in the antebellum era. Wright draws a distinction between slavery as a form of work organization (the aspect that has dominated historical debates) and slavery as a set of property rights. Slaves could be purchased and carried to any location where slavery was legal; they could be assigned to any task regardless of gender or age; they could be punished for disobedience, with no effective recourse to the law; they could be accumulated as a form of wealth; they could be sold or bequeathed Wright argues that slave-based commerce was central to the eighteenth-century rise of the Atlantic economy, not because slave plantations were superior as a method of organizing production, but because slaves could be put to work on sugar plantations that could not have attracted free labor on economically viable terms"--Book jacket.

Description based on print version record.