Slavery And American Economic Development

by Gavin Wright

Through an original analysis of slavery as an economic institution, Gavin Wright presents a fresh look at 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; the 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. On the mainland, Wright suggests that the decisive steps in regional divergence came with the abolition of slavery in the northern states and the exclusion of slavery from the Northwest Territory, measures whose economic impact has been underappreciated. He portrays the seventy years between the Constitution and southern secession as an economic cold war between two fundamentally different systems of property rights. Paradoxically, both sides had reason to claim victory in this contest, if each were allowed to use an economic scoreboard appropriate to its property-rights regime. Rather than seeing the slave South as a flourishing economy that subsequently declined, Wright maintains that the roots of postbellum backwardness were evident in the antebellum era. Startling, insightful, rigorously argued yet accessible to a broad readership, Slavery and American Economic Development is certain to become a classic. AUTHOR Gavin Wright is William Robertson Coe Professor in American Economic History at Stanford University and the author of The Political Economy of the Cotton South and Old South, New Revolutions in the Southern Economy Since the Civil War, winner of the Frank L. and Harriet C. Owsley Award of the Southern Historical Association. He is a past president of the Economic History Association and the Agricultural History Society.

Genres: History, Economics, Nonfiction, American, American History

162 pages, Hardcover

First published October 1, 2006

Reviews

[Frank Stein · Rating 5 out of 5]

Although the book doesn't quite put it in these terms, one could say its main question is, why would someone own slaves? The seemingly obvious answer, cheap labor, is clearly wrong, because as Gavin Wright keeps emphasizing, slave labor was not cheap at all. It was expensive relative to free labor, and got more expensive as time went on (from about $100 a slave in the early US to over $700 just before the Civil War). Another answer might be that you could push the slave to work much harder than other workers. That could be true, and is clearly true in some situations (late Saturday work, night work), but Wright spends an inordinate amount of time showing that the supposed "productivity" advantages of slavery are largely a myth. If anything, when taking account variations in land prices, the types of crops slaves grew, and the use of both male and female labor, slave productivity was completely stagnant for most of U.S. and even colonial history.

So the question remains, why use slaves? Wright thinks to answer this question, we have to stop looking at slave labor as a kind of "work organization," and think of it as a property relationship. Slaves worked in every type of way imaginable, from piece work with incentives, to task labor, to early sharecropping, to gang labor, to hiring out, all of which had clear mimicked in free labor. The real advantage of slavery, after all, was its distinguishing feature, it was ownership of another person. This ownership meant slaveholders could make slaves do things free labor simply wouldn't. In the colonial period, this meant having them work in the sugar fields of the Caribbean and die in vast numbers. It wasn't that free labor was less productive for growing sugar, it was that they simply wouldn't do the work at all. Later, slave owners could bring vast numbers of slaves to remote Western regions to start an entire mini-society on a fresh plantation, buying up the best land before anyone else could get there. They could plant vast numbers of cash-crops, first tobacco, later cotton and wheat, that free farmers remained too concerned would either drop in price, or that they would be unable to harvest in case of a bumper crop. Slave owners could focus entirely on cotton because of their vast potential labor supply (especially of working women and children), and their ability to acquire credit on slaves and ride out bad times. As Wright had argued elsewhere, Southern plantation gentry were really "laborlords," not landlords, which meant in reality they felt no reason to develop surrounding land or towns, unlike the entrepreneurial North.

This book reshaped my whole vision of slavery in early America. It shows how slavery rearranged life in the colonies and the American South in so many subtle ways that are impossible to elaborate here. It demonstrates the value of sustained thought and historical research to overturn many stubborn seeming truths.

[Lance Cahill · Rating 4 out of 5]

The best way to think about this book is in the context of the Coase Theorem, where, in the absence of significant transaction costs, initial allocation of property rights will not matter as parties will bargain to the ideal economic solution. To this degree, there is a school of thought that slavery naturally arose due to the structure of slave labor (chain gang) being efficient for areas where it was predominate. Wright’s book sheds light on information which counter this thesis (not a direct refutation of Fogel-Engerman, but does result in tension).

Wright presents evidence that slavery arose as a result of the initial allocation property rights and that farms which used slave labor weren’t anymore productive than slave less farms. Rather, slave owners had the ability to command a large amount of labor for peak yield seasons, ability to capitalize on seemingly undesirable lands through use of labor to clear the land and ability to move quickly, and were able to secure credit on more favorable terms through use of slaves as collateral.

Wright highlights important evidence that the existence of slavery resulted in a malinvestment in the south, which resulted in low investments in mechanization, infrastructure, human capital, and a general indifference to the well-being of others except for the narrow class of slave holders.

Book contains an interesting, even if an aside, discussion of the cotton gin. I still recalling learning that the invention of the cotton gin is what wedded the south to slavery. Wright exploded this myth - hinting that it’s a myth that has been exploded many times before. I have to admit, wasn’t aware it had been busted!

[Justinmmoffitt · Rating 3 out of 5]

A better title of this collection would be something along the lines of “Slavery and Property Rights.” It was well-researched, though a bit heavy on secondary sources.

[Arnold · Rating 2 out of 5]

A bloated and pompous little book written in an exceptionally vague style. The author's use of the passive voice complicates fairly straightforward arguments. Occasionally there's a sentence that actually is readable, and, like the sun coming out behind the clouds, you can actually see what the author is trying to say.

I would not recommend this book simply because of its style. It cramped, and leaves the reader to constantly trying to fill in the gaps of the author's meaning. There's so much good writing out there... it's a pity this book wasn't a little clearer.

[Bradley Farless · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is extremely important in terms of the information presented and is a great companion to reading Fogel's Time on the Cross, but it is exceptionally dry and not an area I'm particularly interested in, so it was a struggle to finish. I put myself through this read for a graduate history course.

[Rachel · Rating 5 out of 5]

so everyone who thinks they know stuff about the civil war should read this book. a lot of economists who write history books are boring as shit, but wright's style is really conversational and informative and on the whole this book is short and extremely accessible.