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> That's a very bold claim to make, especially given that the half of the country that was heavily dependent on slavery lagged far behind, economically. When y

> That's a very bold claim to make, especially given that the half of the country that was heavily dependent on slavery lagged far behind, economically. When you're restricting yourself to first order effects, yes. But do you think that northern states didn't, like, benefit from the southern economy. Eli Whitney was a northerner through and through. Cotton, however, was able to be acquired cheaply due to slave labor. > It enriched a relatively small but very wealthy planter class, but there's a very strong argument to be made that it prevented economic development in the South. At the very least, something has to explain why the northern states economically developed so much more rapidly than the South during the first half of the 19th Century, and slavery is a very likely explanation. Yes, the northern recovery was easier because they didn't fall into a local maximum and have their economy entirely depend on slave labor to function. That doesn't mean that the northern/US economy didn't vastly benefit from cheap tobacco (and particularly tobacco exports), cotton (and exports), and sugar production. (The price of cotton went up significantly in the direct postwar period, but went back down eventually due to Sharcropping and increased production in the south, as well as increased competition from Egypt and other nations). We now, I think, generally recognize the interconnectedness of economies. Pretending that prior to 1865 economies weren't also interconnected seems strange to me.

rayiner 6y ago
See: http://bradleyahansen.blogspot.com/2014/10/the-back-of-ed-baptists-envelope.html http://bradleyahansen.blogspot.com/2014/10/the-back-of-ed-ba... There are two separate issues here. First, you need to be careful to avoid double-counting. If cotton sales account for 5% of the economy, you can't go and add to that the money Eli Whitney makes from selling cotton gins to southern plantations. The cost of those cotton gins (rather, the amortized depreciation in the value of those cotton gins) is already baked into the sales price of the cotton. The economy is interconnected, but at the end of the day if the value of exported cotton produced by enslaved people is 5% of the economy, then the whole economy can't be singularly dependent on that industry. Second, whether the workers on the plantations are paid labor or enslaved people doesn't change the economic calculus for Eli Whitney. He sells cotton gins either way. Back then cotton could be, and was, produced by free labor. When the Civil War disrupted the American cotton industry, free labor in India and Australia and Egypt filled the market gap: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/how-american-civil-war-built-egypts-vaunted-cotton-industry-and-changed-country-forever-180959967 https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/how-american-civil-wa....
- joshuamorton 6y ago
  > The economy is interconnected, but at the end of the day if the value of exported cotton produced by enslaved people is 5% of the economy, then the whole economy can't be singularly dependent on that industry. I don't think I made such a claim. That said, this claim isn't correct. If the non-exported cotton was a key ingredient in the industries that make up the other 95% of exports (and the non-export economy), the economy would be dependent on that industry. Now I don't think that every aspect of the US economy was dependent on cotton, but textile exports, for example, wouldn't be included as cotton exports, and textiles used at home, wouldn't be either. So this metric does underestimate the economic impact of an industry. > Second, whether the workers on the plantations are paid labor or enslaved people doesn't change the economic calculus for Eli Whitney. He sells cotton gins either way. Back then cotton could be, and was, produced by free labor. When the Civil War disrupted the American cotton industry, free labor in India and Australia and Egypt filled the market gap: I agree. This doesn't change the core point: his fortune was built off of slave labor. There exist alternate timelines where it might not have been, but we don't live in those timelines. Trying to tease counterfactuals out of history isn't really good academics. The flow of history is complex enough that smart people can come to contradictory conclusion. Thus, what happened: the US cotton economy was built on the backs of slave labor. Anything else (even conjecture that I agree with, that the US economy would have been stronger sooner with less slavery as it was essentially a local maxima and prevented other forms of innovation) is conjecture.
  - rayiner 6y ago
    > If the non-exported cotton was a key ingredient in the industries that make up the other 95% of exports (and the non-export economy), the economy would be dependent on that industry. Almost all US cotton production was exported, mostly to England. Also remember that at this time, the vast majority of the economy is self-sufficient farmers. My wife’s family wasn’t buying southern cotton out in Oregon. They were living off the land. Circling back to the Jacobin article, most historians reject the idea that cotton production with slave labor was a big part of the American economy. The contrary claims come from a handful of scholars like Ed Baptist, and as shown in the link above he’s methodology is flawed and rests on double counting. > Trying to tease counterfactuals out of history isn't really good academics. You asserted above that immigration into the US and Silicon Valley, for example, can be said to have grown out of slavery because slavery is the source of America’s economic and industrial might. On one hand, the factual premise is false. Slavery was a small part of the economy before it was abolished. And the wealth that drew people to the country was mostly created after slavery was abolished. Apart from that, you’re invoking a peculiar sort of causation. Someone comes to America as an immigrant and starts a company in 1970, and according to you that “grew out of slavery?” That’s a very “original sin” view of slavery, where the country is forever tainted by the fact slavery existed at one time, regardless of whether there are any traceable benefits to people living today resulting from slavery. There is a metaphysical sense in which that is true but I don’t think most people would interpret “grew out of” that way. More important, thats not how the 1619 Project authors appear to view the causation either. That’s why they rely on this flawed article claiming that 50% of the US economy was from slavery. Their narrative depends on making slavery seem more economically significant than it was, and making people believe they derive tangible benefits from it today.
DiogenesKynikos 6y ago
> the northern recovery was easier because they didn't fall into a local maximum and have their economy entirely depend on slave labor to function. Directly, the Northern economy didn't depend at all on slave labor. It depended on wage labor, supplied in large part by large numbers of immigrants. Almost all immigrants settled in northern states, because there was very little opportunity for them in southern slave-owning society. The jobs and economic growth were almost all in the industrializing North. The South exported most of its cotton (Britain was the largest importer, I think), so if we're talking about who relied indirectly on slavery, there's a much better argument for Britain being the primary beneficiary than the northern states. Economies are interconnected, but that's not the core of your claim - the one I object to. The claim that I object to is that slavery is responsible for the US' economic development. From what I've read, it appears much more to have severely stunted economic growth in half the country for decades, while the half that relied on free labor rapidly industrialized. It appears to me much more that the Southern plantation economy depended heavily on industrial growth in Britain and the northern US, but that British and American textile mills were capable of sourcing their cotton elsewhere if need be (including from economies that used wage labor). The South was much more similar to modern countries that depend entirely on one or a few low-tech exports, such as oil or lumber. Such economies are at the mercy of the international price of their one product. They face tough international competition, because their product isn't particularly complicated, and it's relatively easy to increase production elsewhere in the world. An economy that only exports oil may make a few magnates wealthy, while leaving the economy as a whole stunted and most of the population poor.

rayiner 6y ago

See: http://bradleyahansen.blogspot.com/2014/10/the-back-of-ed-baptists-envelope.html http://bradleyahansen.blogspot.com/2014/10/the-back-of-ed-ba... There are two separate issues here. First, you need to be careful to avoid double-counting. If cotton sales account for 5% of the economy, you can't go and add to that the money Eli Whitney makes from selling cotton gins to southern plantations. The cost of those cotton gins (rather, the amortized depreciation in the value of those cotton gins) is already baked into the sales price of the cotton. The economy is interconnected, but at the end of the day if the value of exported cotton produced by enslaved people is 5% of the economy, then the whole economy can't be singularly dependent on that industry. Second, whether the workers on the plantations are paid labor or enslaved people doesn't change the economic calculus for Eli Whitney. He sells cotton gins either way. Back then cotton could be, and was, produced by free labor. When the Civil War disrupted the American cotton industry, free labor in India and Australia and Egypt filled the market gap: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/how-american-civil-war-built-egypts-vaunted-cotton-industry-and-changed-country-forever-180959967 https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/how-american-civil-wa....

joshuamorton 6y ago
> The economy is interconnected, but at the end of the day if the value of exported cotton produced by enslaved people is 5% of the economy, then the whole economy can't be singularly dependent on that industry. I don't think I made such a claim. That said, this claim isn't correct. If the non-exported cotton was a key ingredient in the industries that make up the other 95% of exports (and the non-export economy), the economy would be dependent on that industry. Now I don't think that every aspect of the US economy was dependent on cotton, but textile exports, for example, wouldn't be included as cotton exports, and textiles used at home, wouldn't be either. So this metric does underestimate the economic impact of an industry. > Second, whether the workers on the plantations are paid labor or enslaved people doesn't change the economic calculus for Eli Whitney. He sells cotton gins either way. Back then cotton could be, and was, produced by free labor. When the Civil War disrupted the American cotton industry, free labor in India and Australia and Egypt filled the market gap: I agree. This doesn't change the core point: his fortune was built off of slave labor. There exist alternate timelines where it might not have been, but we don't live in those timelines. Trying to tease counterfactuals out of history isn't really good academics. The flow of history is complex enough that smart people can come to contradictory conclusion. Thus, what happened: the US cotton economy was built on the backs of slave labor. Anything else (even conjecture that I agree with, that the US economy would have been stronger sooner with less slavery as it was essentially a local maxima and prevented other forms of innovation) is conjecture.
- rayiner 6y ago
  > If the non-exported cotton was a key ingredient in the industries that make up the other 95% of exports (and the non-export economy), the economy would be dependent on that industry. Almost all US cotton production was exported, mostly to England. Also remember that at this time, the vast majority of the economy is self-sufficient farmers. My wife’s family wasn’t buying southern cotton out in Oregon. They were living off the land. Circling back to the Jacobin article, most historians reject the idea that cotton production with slave labor was a big part of the American economy. The contrary claims come from a handful of scholars like Ed Baptist, and as shown in the link above he’s methodology is flawed and rests on double counting. > Trying to tease counterfactuals out of history isn't really good academics. You asserted above that immigration into the US and Silicon Valley, for example, can be said to have grown out of slavery because slavery is the source of America’s economic and industrial might. On one hand, the factual premise is false. Slavery was a small part of the economy before it was abolished. And the wealth that drew people to the country was mostly created after slavery was abolished. Apart from that, you’re invoking a peculiar sort of causation. Someone comes to America as an immigrant and starts a company in 1970, and according to you that “grew out of slavery?” That’s a very “original sin” view of slavery, where the country is forever tainted by the fact slavery existed at one time, regardless of whether there are any traceable benefits to people living today resulting from slavery. There is a metaphysical sense in which that is true but I don’t think most people would interpret “grew out of” that way. More important, thats not how the 1619 Project authors appear to view the causation either. That’s why they rely on this flawed article claiming that 50% of the US economy was from slavery. Their narrative depends on making slavery seem more economically significant than it was, and making people believe they derive tangible benefits from it today.

DiogenesKynikos 6y ago

> the northern recovery was easier because they didn't fall into a local maximum and have their economy entirely depend on slave labor to function. Directly, the Northern economy didn't depend at all on slave labor. It depended on wage labor, supplied in large part by large numbers of immigrants. Almost all immigrants settled in northern states, because there was very little opportunity for them in southern slave-owning society. The jobs and economic growth were almost all in the industrializing North. The South exported most of its cotton (Britain was the largest importer, I think), so if we're talking about who relied indirectly on slavery, there's a much better argument for Britain being the primary beneficiary than the northern states. Economies are interconnected, but that's not the core of your claim - the one I object to. The claim that I object to is that slavery is responsible for the US' economic development. From what I've read, it appears much more to have severely stunted economic growth in half the country for decades, while the half that relied on free labor rapidly industrialized. It appears to me much more that the Southern plantation economy depended heavily on industrial growth in Britain and the northern US, but that British and American textile mills were capable of sourcing their cotton elsewhere if need be (including from economies that used wage labor). The South was much more similar to modern countries that depend entirely on one or a few low-tech exports, such as oil or lumber. Such economies are at the mercy of the international price of their one product. They face tough international competition, because their product isn't particularly complicated, and it's relatively easy to increase production elsewhere in the world. An economy that only exports oil may make a few magnates wealthy, while leaving the economy as a whole stunted and most of the population poor.