| Description |
1 online resource (xiv, 295 pages) : illustrations, facsimiles |
| Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references (pages 208-276) and index. |
| Summary |
Accounting for Slavery offers a history of business and management practices on slave plantations in the British West Indies and the American South, covering the century from approximately 1780-1880. Far from lagging behind Northern manufacturers, the most sophisticated Southern planters used complex management techniques, measuring and monitoring their human capital with precision. More broadly, the book explores the complex relationship between slavery and capitalism in American history. The traditional story of modern management focuses on the factories of England and New England, largely ignoring plantation economies. Drawing on extensive archival research into plantation accounting practices, the author argues that the harsh realities of slavery were compatible with a highly quantitative, calculating style of management. Planters allocated and reallocated slaves' labor from task to task, precisely monitored their productivity, and depreciated their "human capital" decades before depreciation became a common accounting technique.-- Provided by publisher |
| Contents |
Hierarchies of life and death -- Forms of labor -- Slavery's scientific management -- Human capital -- Managing freedom -- Conclusion: Histories of business and slavery -- Epilogue: Forward to scientific management. |
| Local Note |
eBooks on EBSCOhost EBSCO eBook Subscription Academic Collection - North America |
| Subject |
Slavery -- Economic aspects -- United States -- History -- 18th century.
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Slavery -- Economic aspects -- United States -- History -- 19th century.
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Slavery -- Economic aspects -- West Indies, British -- History -- 18th century.
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Slavery -- Economic aspects -- West Indies, British -- History -- 19th century.
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Human capital -- United States -- History.
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Human capital -- West Indies, British -- History.
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Plantations -- United States -- Accounting -- History.
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Plantations -- West Indies, British -- Accounting -- History.
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Plantation owners -- United States -- History.
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Plantation owners -- West Indies, British -- History.
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BUSINESS & ECONOMICS -- Labor. |
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POLITICAL SCIENCE -- Labor & Industrial Relations. |
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HISTORY -- United States -- 19th Century. |
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Human capital. |
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Plantation owners. |
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Plantations -- Accounting. |
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Slavery -- Economic aspects. |
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United States. |
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West Indies -- British West Indies. |
| Chronological Term |
1700-1899 |
| Genre/Form |
History.
|
| Other Form: |
Print version: Rosenthal, Caitlin. Accounting for slavery. Cambridge, Massachusetts : Harvard University Press, 2018 9780674972094 (DLC) 2017058060 (OCoLC)1019844344 |
| ISBN |
9780674988590 (electronic bk.) |
|
0674988590 (electronic bk.) |
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9780674988576 (electronic bk.) |
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0674988574 (electronic bk.) |
|
9780674972094 (hardcover ; alkaline paper) |
|
0674972090 (hardcover ; alkaline paper) |
| Standard No. |
99978877517 |
| Report No. |
(Coutts)040389345 |
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