TY  - BOOK
AU  - Wright,Gavin
TI  - Slavery and American economic development
T2  - Walter Lynwood Fleming lectures in southern history
SN  - 0807131830 (cloth : alk. paper)
AV  - E441 .W93 2006
U1  - 306.3/620973 22
PY  - 2006///
CY  - Baton Rouge
PB  - Louisiana State University Press
KW  - Slavery
KW  - Economic aspects
KW  - United States
KW  - Right of property
KW  - History
KW  - Economic conditions
KW  - To 1865
N1  - Includes bibliographical references (p. 135-151) and index; Introduction : what was slavery? -- Slavery, geography, and commerce -- Property and progress in antebellum America -- Property rights, productivity, and slavery -- Epilogue : the legacy of slavery
N2  - "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
ER  -