Economic reasons for slavery in the USA before the ban of slavery

by KingofCurrywurst

Hello fellow redditors & Historians!

Please know that English is not my first language and that I am a german history student attending university. The topic of this thread is one of my 2 possible final exam topics and I am looking for some help, advice or even better, literature.

My Professor did not accept my literature list, because it contains -as she said- too old information (published ~1970 etc.).

Here it is:

  • Fogel, Robert W./Engerman, Stanley L., The relative efficiency of slavery. A comparison of northern and southern agriculture in 1860, in: Explorations in Economic History 8 (1971) H. 3, S. 353-367.

  • Katz, Stanley Nider/Kutler, Stanley I., New perspectives on the American past, Boston 1969.

  • Metzer, Jacob, Rational management, modern business practices, and economies of scale in the ante-bellum southern plantations, in: Explorations in Economic History 12 (1975) H. 2, S. 123-150.

  • Wright, Gavin, Slavery and the cotton boom, in: Explorations in Economic History 12 (1975) H. 4, S. 439-451.

  • Jones, Peter d'Alroy, The U.S.A. A history of its people and society to 1877, Vol.1, Illinois 1976.

Now, I would love to hear if you have any "newer" (1990+) literature to recommend and if possible, a URL that leads me to it. That would help me tremendously! English literature is fine!

Thank you very, very much in advance!

orangecamo

This would be good question to ask in in r/homeworkhelp.

most of these are from a school of historical thought called cliometrics that emerged in the seventies. Many, if not most, historians reject this school of thought for a long and complicated list of reasons that are not worth getting into here. For the most up to date set of literature, I would look at:

  • Johnson, Walter. Soul by Soul: Life inside the Antebellum Slave Market. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1999.

  • Baptist, Edward E. The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism. New York: Basic Books, a member of the Perseus Books Group, 2014.

  • Beckert, Sven. Empire of Cotton: A Global History. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2015.

For more references, look at what books and articles these authors cite. You can also look at a recent discussion on H-Slavery that discusses recent literature on this topic.