The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism

In The Half Has Never Been Told the historian Edward E. Baptist vividly describes the ways enslaved people shaped the development of modern capitalism. He asserts that their exploitation in the cotton fields, through violent force, enabled the United States to prosper, expand, and become a world leader in cotton production. Baptist anchors his study in the eighty-year period between the end of the American Revolution and the beginning of the Civil War, tracing the experience of enslaved people through trade, travel, separation, labor, and violence. The vast body of scholarship on slavery has noticeably shifted in the last two decades, and the institution of slavery now has a prominent place in national conversations about U.S. history. Baptist's The Half Has Never Been Told arrives within this watershed moment in the historiography, as a plethora of slavery studies have prompted new understandings of an old institution. Baptist's work also appears at a time when films, television shows, and documentaries are introducing an increasingly wider audience to this history.