Slavery and the Numbers Game: A Critique of Time on the Cross
by Herbert G. Gutman
Blacks in the New World (1975)
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This detailed analysis of slavery in the antebellum South was written in 1975 in response to the prior year's publication of Robert Fogel and Stanley Engerman's controversial Time on the Cross, which argued that slavery was an efficient and dynamic engine for the southern economy and that its success was due largely to the willing cooperation of the slaves themselves. Noted labor historian Herbert G. Gutman was unconvinced, even outraged, by Fogel and Engerman's arguments. In this book show more he offers a systematic dissection of Time on the Cross, drawing on a wealth of data to contest that book's most fundamental assertions. A benchmark work of historical inquiry, Gutman's critique sheds light on a range of crucial aspects of slavery and its economic effectiveness. Gutman emphasizes the slaves' responses to their treatment at the hands of slaveowners. He shows that slaves labored, not because they shared values and goals with their masters, but because of the omnipresent threat of 'negative incentives,' primarily physical violence. In his introduction to this new edition, Bruce Levine provides a historical analysis of the debate over Time on the Cross. Levine reminds us of the continuing influence of the latter book, demonstrated by Robert W. Fogel's 1993 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences, and hence the importance and timeliness of Gutman's critique. show lessTags
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Common Knowledge
- Canonical title
- Slavery and the Numbers Game: A Critique of Time on the Cross
- Original publication date
- 1975
- Important places
- Southern States, USA
- Epigraph
- He who reads the inscrutable book of Nature as if it were a Merchant's Ledger, is justly suspected of having never seen that book, but only some School Synopsis thereof; from which if taken for the real book, more error than ... (show all)insight is to be derived.
Thomas Carlyle
...I have that all in figures -- avaerages of deaths in the first cargoes, 25 per cent. -- large average, certainly; they didn't manage the business exactly right; but then the rate of increase in a Christian country averages... (show all) 25 per cent over what it would have been in Africa. Now, . . . if these had been left in Africa, they would have been all heathen; by getting them over here, they have just as many, and all Christians to boot. Because, you see, the excess of increase balances the percentage of loss, and we make no deduction for interest in those cases.
Harriet Beecher Stowe[?] - Dedication
- For Marta and Neil
who are making their own worlds
and know what counts - First words
- Few historical subjects have attracted as much attention, popular or scholarly, as African American slavery. (Introduction to the 2003 Paperback / Bruce Levine)
Time on the Cross: The Economics of American Negro Slavery should be read as theater because it deals with two performances: the performance of the slave economy and the performance of enslaved Afro-Americans.
Few books in United States history, and certainly none about the history of enslaved Afro-Americans published in the past two decades, have attracted more popular notice and given more promise of provoking fierce controversy ... (show all)among historians and even lay persons that Robert William Fogel's and Stanley L. Engerman's Time on the Cross: The Economics of American Negro Slavery. (Introduction)
The Central Theme in T/C: "Black Achievement under Adversity"
Just as southern history has its "central theme," so, too, does T/C in dealing with the beliefs and behavior of enslaved Afro-Americans, that is, in... (show all) dealing with their social history. (An Overview of T/C) - Last words
- (Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)It really tells us nothing of importance about the beliefs and behavior of enslaved Afro-Americans.
- Disambiguation notice
- "This work originally appeared in slightly different form in The Journal of Negro History (January 1975) under a different title." T.p. verso
Classifications
- Genres
- Economics, Nonfiction, History, General Nonfiction
- DDC/MDS
- 331.1 — Society, government, & culture Economics Labor economics Labor force and market
- LCC
- E449 .F653 .G87 — History of the United States United States Revolution to the Civil War, 1775/1783-1861 Slavery in the United States. Antislavery
- BISAC
Statistics
- Members
- 47
- Popularity
- 639,238
- Rating
- (5.00)
- Languages
- English
- Media
- Paper
- ISBNs
- 3
- ASINs
- 1
