As promised to @WorldProfessor here is a thread on how I teach US slavery in my course on American economic history. (Long thread follows)
Preliminaries: Slavery as a unit comes after macro measures and after labor markets, but students already see southern labor markets after the Civil War as outliers. They also have seen C Goldin and K Sokoloff on regional differences in productivity, & Fogel on measurement
I begin with Fogel “Three phases” (AER) as an overview of the general themes that economists have concerned themselves with re: US slavery. Defines the issues that economists saw as important and how the issue of profitability led to further investigation of the institution.
It is a nice reading list circa Time On The Cross (TOTC) and defines some key players. Fogel makes his first defense of the geometric index of total factor productivity, which I tell students will be important later. Largest advantage is that it discusses key data used
I then move to C Calomiris and J Pritchett “Betting on Succession” (AER 2016) which shows that white southerners were quite optimistic about the future of slavery until Lincoln’s election. Also describes a major new data source since TOTC.
Discussion here includes how Northern interest and policy played a role in continuing the institution. Land and finance policy were important here. I also describe how slave sales occurred and the fact that trading in slaves was a lucrative business.
Next comes historiography. I begin teaching about TOTC by first describing the major works that preceded it. Start with Phillips, then Stampp, then Elkins, then Blassingame, then Genovese. Describe the major thrust of their work and how it fed into historians understanding.
The key here is to note that social science methods were working their way into history after WWII and it was not only economics nor quantitative methods. Also, Blassingame changed the arc in fundamental ways by centering the slave experience (more on this later)
(I also briefly touch on other work such as Kaye, Jones, Levine, Olmstead, but we only have so much time and these are not they key players re: economic history)
We then move to TOTC. I do NOT make students read it. They only read the introduction. We cover the “10 corrections” and the “hierarchy of data” that they describe. Given the historiography already discussed the students see why this is important and how controversial this was.
We then to go P David and P Temin “Capitalist Masters...” (JIH) and we talk about how the hierarchy of data leads to an inferential problem with TOTC. There is no way of going from equilibrium to behavior and yet TOTC does just that. Repeatedly.
Next up is Gutman “Numbers Game” and we spend a great deal of time on this. Fogel and Engerman wrote a very bad history of US slavery. And the inferential problem mentioned above is shown to be critical to why this book cannot be read in my course.
We start with incentives. I read from the Barrow diary and describe how customs are not incentives and how the use of bonuses was incorrect given the data in the diary.
We then move to punishments and the (terrible) calculation of whippings. This comes from @MarthaOlney who really put this in my head in grad school. I read from the diary again the litany of punishment metered out on the Barrow plantation
Barrow is supposed to be the example of positive incentives being effective, yet he BUILDS A JAIL on his plantation. There is no Protestant work ethic being transmitted here. This is shameful for the field of Economic History. But we must teach it.
I then briefly go through the other faults. The non-facts on slave breeding, the terrible calculations on rates of family breakup, the irresponsible argument about sexual exploitation. All of it. Every part of the social story they want to tell is deeply problematic.
We also read Haskell “True and Tragical...” to put this in a broader perspective. By the end of the first week a student always asks me how Fogel could have won a novel prize. My answer:
I begin the second week by talking about where we are at. TOTC is bad. It’s being attacked and the integrity of the authors is being questioned. So F&E regroup, and they cut their losses, and they go back to the beginning. They go back to the productivity calculation.
We start with F&E in AER 1977 “explaining efficiency” which is a defense of their calculation of the productivity of southern agriculture. They move through a series of critiques to the calculation. They are ready to fight.
This debate is technical and is about data. They have changed the venue for the argument. I then move to the comments by Wright and by David and Temin. I close with F&E’s response. This takes a week and we go through this in great detail to go over the anatomy of the argument
F&E win on prices, output, production constraints, insurance, crop mix, etc. It’s a battle of the force and in the end their original calculation is established and likely accepted by the majority of the field. (Whether it’s the right calculation is another question.)
They bottom line is that the south WAS more productive than the north and this was due to intensive labor exploitation. The work of pregnant women, the culture of fear and intimidation, and the use of counts of individual productivity was critical in this.
But this vindication of efficiency came with a great cost. The audience for economic history shrank dramatically. The knowledge we have is for 1860- far too static. The new history of capitalism ignores it. Economic historians agree on efficiency, but there’s more to know
There is little attempt among Economic historians now to make contributions that historians will pay attention to. We’re much more comfortable talking about data and methodology than history. This is bad for the field.
To read the efficiency debate as opposed to the TOTC debate is to see two parts of economic history. One is concerned with historiography and changing the methods and topics in history, and the other is about data and measurement. The latter is modern day economic history
There is also a racial dimension that continues to have an influence. F&E the racial aspects wrong. Very wrong. But they attempted to divorce the racial aspects from the economics, and we cannot.
The field now is very, very reluctant to deal with race. We still have not answered Gutman’s questions on agency, and economic history is openly hostile to African American agency as a result. We have no model of race nor any deep thinking about it.
Fogel’s third phase (The Recovery of Black History) never took off in economic history. We did not develop the theoretical tools to do so, including an understanding of the economics of race and the socioeconomics of groups and markets.
But this efficiency calculation is important. Without the work of Economic Historians we would not have the basis for calculations for, say, reparations. These are critical in understanding how important slavery was to national income and regional importance.
But the problem is that the calculation is limited, confined to a model which may not fit the circumstances, and moved Economic History away from its humanist origins.
I teach slavery this way because (1) we MUST talk about our failures (2) it’s the first time students see a production function outside of a problem set and (3) students see why the majority of the papers in the class look the way that they do. Economic history today is insular
