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Slavery and Technological Change

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 May 2010

R. Keith Aufhauser
R. Keith Aufhauser
Affiliation:
Queens College, C.U.N.Y.
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Extract

Much of the confusion in the debate on slavery and technology derives from the belief that identifies technological change with progress. Not only the Awkwrights and Seniors thought this way; Marx and, from what I have heard from my colleagues at this conference, a fair proportion of economic historians maintain that the salvation of society depends upon changes in the techniques of production.

Type
Papers Presented at the Thirty-third Annual Meeting of the Economic History Association
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 34 , Issue 1 , March 1974 , pp. 36 - 50
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1974

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References

Thanks to: Gerard Vila, John McNees, Albert Hirschman, Steve Marglin, Samuel Bowles, Herbert Gintis, Henry Rosovsky, Peter McClelland, Nathan Rosenberg, Stanley Engerman, Thom Thurston, Ron Filante, Fred Goldman, Heywood Fleisig, and Robert E. Gallman.

1 Conrad, A. and Meyer, J., The Economics of Slavery (Chicago: Aldine, 1967)Google Scholar; Domar, E., “The Causes of Slavery and Serfdom,” Journal of Economic History (March 1970).Google ScholarGenovese, Eugene, The Political Economy of Slavery (New York: Vintage 1965), pp. 281–283Google Scholar; Stephen Marglin, “What Do Bosses Do?” (Ms., Harvard University); Landes, David, The Unbound Prometheus (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971) all touch on the controversy.Google Scholar

2 Emerson, Ralph Waldo, quoted by Davis, David Byron, The Problem of Slavery in Western Culture (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1969), p. 26.Google Scholar

3 Marx, Karl, Capital, Volume 1 (New York: Progress, 1968), p. 191.Google Scholar

4 Thompson, E. P., The Making of the English Working Class, (New York: Vintage, 1966), speaks of this attitude.Google Scholar

5 Roughly, Thomas, The Jamaica Planter's Guide (London, 1823), p. 269.Google Scholar

6 Colonial Office 7/42. Quoted in Douglas Hall, Five of the Leewards, forthcoming. Emphasis added.

7 Sitterson, J. C., Sugar Country: The Cane Sugar Industry in the South, 1753–1950 (Lexington: University of Kentucky 1953), p. 128.Google Scholar Pugh Family Papers, Plantation Diary, May 13, 1861, Dept. of Archives, Louisiana State University. Minor Plantation Diary, 1861–1868, Department of Archives, Louisiana State University. Shugg, Roger W., Origins of the Class Struggle in Louisiana: A Social History of White Farmers and Laborers During Slavery and After, 1840–1875 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University, 1939), 89.Google Scholar

The reader might object that the multifarious activities for the Louisiana slave developed despite the system of slavery and as a result of the large number of free workers which distinguished the American South from the British Caribbean. I grant that such a case is possible, but the burden of proof is heavy, particularly given the heavy demand for slave labor in all sectors of southern economic activity. See Starobin, R., Industrial Slavery in the Old South (New York: Oxford, 1970).Google Scholar

8 Sitterson, Sugar Country, p. 146.

9 Ibid., p. 149.

10 de Cavalho, Ricarao E. Ferreira, Noticias sobe os mais recentos melhoramentos adaptados no lavoura de Canna e Fabrico do Assucar (Sao Luiz, 1869), p. 67.Google Scholar

11 Sitterson, Sugar Country, p. 154.

12 Ibid., p. 149.

13 ibid., pp. 64–65.

14 Caves, Jamaican Mss. Memorandum Book (Institute of Jamaica, Archives), p. 18.

15 Andrew and Ellen McCollam, Papers #550, Vol. I, “Diary of a Brazilian Voyage,” Department of Archives, Louisiana State University.

16 Knight, F., Slavery in Cuba (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1971).Google Scholar

17 Genovese, Political. Richard Wade, Slavery in Cities. Starobin, Industrial.

18 Ortiz, Fernando, Cuban Counterpoint: Sugar and Tobacco (New York: Vintage, 1970), pp. 6–7.Google Scholar

19 Tannenbaum, Frank, Slave and Citizen (New York: Vintage, 1969)Google Scholar made the mistake of comparing technologies in the name of comparing cultures.

20 Sanchez, Guerra y, Sugar and Society in the Caribbean (New Haven: Yale, 1964), p. 33.Google Scholar

21 Parliamentary Papers (Great Britain, 1842), p. 506. Emphasis added,

22 Mintz, Stanley, “Labor and Sugar in Puerto Rico and Jamaica, 1800–1850,” in Genovese, and Foner, , Slavery in the New World (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1969), pp. 174–175.Google Scholar

23 de Toqueville, Alex, De la Democratic en Amerique, Tome 1 (Paris: Gallimard, 1961), p. 364.Google Scholar

24 Ibid., pp. 368–369.

25 Shugg, Origins, pp. 24–25. Also Gavin Wright, “The Concentration of Wealth in the Old South,” Agricultural History (1970).

26 Sitterson, Sugar Country, p. 241.

27 Ellis, D. L., “The Transition from Slave to Free Labor in Louisiana,” unpublished L.S.U. Thesis, 1932, p. 77.Google Scholar