There's a historiographical dispute that's been emerging out of the recent body of work centred on the economic history of the pre-Civil War United States, it seems. Right at the centre of it is Edward Baptist's book, The Half Has Never Been Told; also in the corner are works like Sven Beckert's Empire of Cotton. On the other side are economic historians like Paul Rhode, Alan Olmstead, and Trevon Logan. The accusation is that the former group handles economic data very carelessly to essentially manufacture evidence for their conclusions about the centrality of slavery to American capitalism. The counterargument seems mainly to be that certain economic historians and economists are nitpicking and ignoring the bigger picture, as well as engaging in unhelpful counterfactuals. But the divide isn't neat or clean (either between people with differing ideas about slavery, or between disciplines). So the rather high-stakes issue on the table seems to be how economic history ought to be studied.

Would be great to hear what you guys think!