Slavery and American Economic Development

Good things indeed come in small packages. Gavin Wright's Slavery and American Economic Development is a succinct, compelling attempt to reorient our understanding of slavery's role in the economic history of North America. Rather than examining slavery as a labor system, Wright insists that the economics of slavery can be best understood if examined through the lens of property rights. Efficiency, productivity, or work organization are less significant than the legal classification of slaves as property; they could be bought and sold, taken anywhere the institution was legal, and put to work at almost any task without regard to age or gender and with little or no legal recourse for the slave. This proposition seems deceptively simple at first, almost obvious. But as he winds his way through the historiography of slavery, Wright makes a compelling case that cliometricians and others have ignored at their peril the ramifications of property rights in slaves.