Caitlin C. Rosenthal, “Accounting for Slavery: Masters and Management” (Harvard UP, 2018)

New Books in African American Studies · Oct 31, 2018 · 38m

The familiar narrative of American business development begins in the industrial North, where paternalistic factory owners, committed to a kind of Protestant ethic, scaled up their operations into ‘total institutions’—an effort to forestall labor turnover by providing housing and fulfilling community needs. Many of these firms were, of course, dependent on the availability of cotton from the South where, as Caitlin C. Rosenthal argues, modern management practices were expanded and refined through experimentation with enslaved workers. Accounting for Slavery: Masters and Management (Harvard…