Just about 10 years ago, I wrote about the book The American Slave Coast, which laid out the economic reality of slave-breeding, showing that ending the importation of enslaved people to the U.S. in 1808 wasn't humanitarianism: it was protectionism, particularly for Virginia plantation owners, upping the value of their investment in human beings against cheaper imports.
A new commentary, recently published in the Wall Street Journal (gift link) touches on similar topics, but also describes the economic scale of cotton-growing in the U.S., which relied on those enslaved people, and their 10-fold increase in population between 1808 and 1861.
Before Eli Whitney's cotton gin (invented 1794), and while people were still being imported from Africa, the U.S. produced just 1.5 million pounds of cotton. The number went up incredibly from there:
- 1790: 1.5 million pounds
- 1800: 36.5 million pounds
- 1820: 167.5 million pounds
- 1860: Nearly 2 billion pounds
By the Civil War, cotton was more than 60% of U.S. exports, and the material was going to English cotton mills. Shipping, handling, and middleman industries all were built upon the backs of the enslaved as well.
At its peak, the enslaved population’s market value exceeded the worth of all the other industrial capital in the country, which would include railroads and factories, estimates economist Thomas Piketty.
Enslaved people were, essentially, currency — as the author of The American Slave Coast explained. They were "sold down the river" to the newly stolen lands nearer to the Mississippi any time an owner needed cash, or used as collateral against loans.
__
A related post from 2021: You Can't Found Legitimacy on Illegitimacy.
No comments:
Post a Comment