The Half Has Never Been Told: Uncovering the Impact of Slavery on the Formation of American Capitalism

L.B.: Superb.

United States on Feb 03, 2024

Rosebud: Book is thoroughly researched and documented. A real quality work. Tells that slavery produced cotton, the commodity all the world needed and developed the United States economy at great cost to the slaves. No innovations were involved in what the slaves did just cruel method after cruel method to increase production. Over the period of time when cotton was picked production increased 300%. A lot of information about how slaves were treated. e.g. slaves walked as fast as they could while walking day after day in many cases from slave markets in Richmond, Va to clear forests for fields in Alabama and Mississippi. Families often broken up never to see each other again. A great book. Interesting that no major publisher published the book.also interesting that Richmond did not have it in its main library. Slavery is a secret kept by white supremicists that affects black people today. Black and white people have to realize its horrors.

United States on Dec 31, 2023

Amazon Customer: Just a remarkable work of history. Beautifully structured and written. Bold, heartbreaking, a genuinely moving book that captures the humanity of the enslaved while illustrating their vital importance to the development of American capitalism. Historical writing at its best.

Canada on Feb 01, 2022

Judy: Interesting book

United Kingdom on Dec 04, 2021

Amazon Customer: Gets to the heart of the matter. And without being dry and academic-sounding!

Canada on Feb 27, 2019

Christian Nugue: Far from being a sideshow, a marginal phenomenon, slavery epitomizes American XIXth century capitalism. Enormous fortunes were built litterally on the back of black people transported against their will to the "Southwest" and made to toil eleven hours a day in the cotton fields. "Added value" was extracted with the whip. The "half" which is told here is in fact a main component of American history.
Edward Baptist is a professional historian who builds his case on thousands of charts and original documents that make his main thesis absolutely convincing and a valuable contribution to the ongoing revival of studies devoted to slavery.
A minor spoiler now: I wish the author had focussed on his point and refrained from telling individual stories, or more precisely, to woe the reader with the premices of individual stories that never fully materialize, probably for lack of documents.

France on Apr 27, 2015

Maggie: Edward E. Baptist’s The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism is an emotionally charged and economically complex look at slavery in the United States. Slavery, and the capitalism fueling it, is a distinctly passionate topic for Baptist; who supports his book by utilizing first hand accounts from enslaved individuals as often as he does a bank’s financial records. The balance act created in analyzing slavery’s place in U.S. history is paralleled with an attempt to chronicle the enslaved person’s experience as they unwilling fueled the world market. His attempts are both successful and flawed. 


Drawing from the book’s title readers can hypothesize links between the relationship slavery and modern capitalism had, modern being the nineteenth century. The answer [arguably] lies painstakingly in the latter half of Baptist’s book. As the focus on tobacco and other “drug foods” decelerated, it was cotton, the new staple of “mechanical innovation,” which would stabilize an otherwise financially tempestuous United State’s economy. (78, 80) The cotton gin and other technological advancements, could only do so much, however;...

United States on Apr 26, 2015

apf102: In many ways this book does for the story of slavery what Dee Brown's "Bury my heart at Wounded Knee" attempted to do for Indians in 1970 - it recasts the whole of the story of slavery to see it through the experiences of those it affected. But where Brown's speculative approach was criticised, Baptist is forensic in his evidence. He draws the tales of ordinary men women and children from the pages of the scant records and produces a narrative of living, breathing human beings.

Baptist fundamentally challenges the bastions of long held slavery orthodoxies and demonstrates how the issues which led slavery to such success not only built modern America but also drove the development of capitalism. Further he cautions, that such practices might still be seen in the world today.

A powerful book and required reading for anyone interested in this topic.

United Kingdom on Mar 01, 2015

George N. Schmidt: Anyone who had to grow up in the USA during the 1950s and 1960s was propagandized by the myths that grew out of the "noble cause" version of the racist war to save slavery fought by the Confederate States of America between 1861 and 1865. The version of history that we were taught in public and private schools during those years might have begun and ended with the showing of "Gone With The Wind" -- with maybe "Birth of a Nation" thrown in to remind us of the nobility of Nathan Bedford Forrest's band of veterans of the noble cause. Add to that the myth of Robert E. Lee and the trashing of U.S. Grant (and Reconstruction) and we had a deep hole to dig out of if we wanted to understand the true history of a country that in 1861 had four million men, women and children in bondage and an entire class of pundits, preachers, and professors devoting their well-subsidized writings to creating the racist myths of American slavery.

Of course there were books and studies that pointed out the other side and debunked the silly stuff produced by Margaret Mitchell and the official racist propagandists posing as historians -- but they were as hard to find in most American schools when I went...

United States on Sep 17, 2014