Techniques that are still used by businesses today.” A morally reprehensible-and very profitable business… Rosenthal argues that slaveholders…were using advanced management and accounting techniques long before their northern counterparts. “Slavery in the United States was a business. The result is a groundbreaking investigation of business practices in Southern and West Indian plantations and an essential contribution to our understanding of slavery’s relationship with capitalism. Challenging the traditional depiction of slavery as a barrier to innovation, Accounting for Slavery shows how elite planters turned their power over enslaved people into a productivity advantage. They took meticulous notes, carefully recording daily profits and productivity, and subjected their slaves to experiments and incentive strategies comprised of rewards and brutal punishment. But after scouring through old accounting books, Caitlin Rosenthal discovered that Southern planter-capitalists practiced an early form of scientific management. The story of modern management generally looks to the factories of England and New England for its genesis. “The evolution of modern management is usually associated with good old-fashioned intelligence and ingenuity… But capitalism is not just about the free market it was also built on the backs of slaves.” A Five Books Best Economics Book of the Year
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