Accounting for Slavery
Masters and Management

The plantation accounting records in this book are chilling. For example, on “Form I: Inventory of Lives on Canebrake Plantation, 1857,” planter James Green Carson assigned the beginning and end-of-year values to his slaves. Babies under one year were worth $25. A healthy 20-year-old male was worth......more

“A previous generation of historians described the rise of absenteeism as a catalyst for West Indian decline.... [But] examining the rise of absenteeism through the lens of business history offers an alternative to the decline thesis: absentee proprietorship can be seen as an early case of the separ......more

Couldn't recommend more highly. A study on how quantitative systems can be used to rationalize and sanitize horror. Interesting to read right after finishing Eichmann in Jerusalem.......more

This was an incredibly difficult to read book. First, the writing was dry. Second, the subject is complex. Let's face it, talking about human beings in terms that defines them as no better than livestock is uncomfortable. That being said, I am glad to have read this book. If you want to understand th......more

From the book's conclusion: "...This book brings together two very different kinds of history--business history and the history of slavery. These fields rarely intersect. They are studied by different groups of scholars who attend different conferences and ask different questions. But each field has......more