caitlin rosenthal accounting for slavery

She examines an abundance of precise details held in the records of slave owners. It relies instead upon common-sense observations: however much we envy a handful of excessively successful individuals, we still recognise that in general we are all better off.Ĭaitlin Rosenthal’s history of the accounting and management of slave plantations in the Americas goes a long way towards puncturing common-sense narratives of free market economics. Justification of the free market is not bogged down in political, religious or philosophical ideology. and West Indian plantations… She found that their owners employed advanced accounting and management tools, including depreciation and standardized efficiency metrics.The defence of capitalism as an inherently better system of economic distribution than its alternatives tends to rely on the assumption that it benefits most people most of the time.

“Rosenthal pored over hundreds of account books from U.S. and West Indian plantations… She found that their owners employed advanced accounting and management tools, including depreciation and standardized efficiency metrics.” Techniques that are still used by businesses today.” A morally reprehensible-and very profitable business… Rosenthal argues that slaveholders…were using advanced management and accounting techniques long before their northern counterparts. “Slavery in the United States was a business. The result is a groundbreaking investigation of business practices in Southern and West Indian plantations and an essential contribution to our understanding of slavery’s relationship with capitalism. Challenging the traditional depiction of slavery as a barrier to innovation, Accounting for Slavery shows how elite planters turned their power over enslaved people into a productivity advantage.

They took meticulous notes, carefully recording daily profits and productivity, and subjected their slaves to experiments and incentive strategies comprised of rewards and brutal punishment. But after scouring through old accounting books, Caitlin Rosenthal discovered that Southern planter-capitalists practiced an early form of scientific management. The story of modern management generally looks to the factories of England and New England for its genesis. “The evolution of modern management is usually associated with good old-fashioned intelligence and ingenuity… But capitalism is not just about the free market it was also built on the backs of slaves.” A Five Books Best Economics Book of the Year

Caitlin rosenthal accounting for slavery