Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism
Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism
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奴隶制与美国资本主义的形成
DOI：
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发表时间：
2015
影响因子：
3.8
通讯作者：
Desmond Jagmohan
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文献类型：
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作者：
Desmond Jagmohan
在美国政治学协会第86届年会上的主席演讲中，朱迪思·什克拉尔提醒她的听众，美国“同时进行了两项实验：一项是民主，另一项是暴政”，她所说的暴政是指“在欧洲世界其他地方消失很久之后，动产奴隶制的普遍存在”。她坚持认为奴隶制是“我们政治发展”的一个组成特征，因此恳求我们恢复其对美国政治研究的重要性。Shklar，“Redeeming American Political Theory，”American Political Science Review，1991）. Edward E.浸信会的一半从来没有被告知就是这样，以及更多。这是一个深刻和博学的研究奴隶制从美国独立战争到内战的诞生。简单地说，浸信会认为奴隶制建立了现代美国。但要想知道原因，我们必须驳斥两个长期存在的假设。第一种观点认为奴隶制是一种“特殊的制度”，是国家政治发展的附带产物，第二种观点认为奴隶制与资本主义是对立的。这两种假设都起源于废奴主义者对奴隶制的批评，他们指出奴隶制的政治不道德;奴隶制的最终罪行是剥夺自由权利和保护被奴役的非洲裔美国人。因此，他们将奴隶制与国家所谓的自由和民主制度和价值观形成鲜明对比。从他们的政治纲领中，废奴主义者得出了一个薄弱的经济结论：奴隶制是无生产力的，无利润的，效率低下的。当奴隶主把自己描绘成仁慈的家长主义者，而不是剥削利润的追求者时，他们无意中同意了批评者的观点。经过历史学家的流传，这些花言巧语已经变成了事实。我们也愿意相信自由劳动比奴隶制更合乎道德，更有效率。“如果奴隶制在美国历史之外，例如，如果它确实是美国经济增长的拖累，而不是火箭助推器，那么奴隶制与美国的增长无关，成功，权力，财富，“浸信会写道。相反，他认为奴隶制对国家的经济和政治发展至关重要。在无缝和令人信服的散文，他重定向更大的政治和经济观察到微观层面，以现象学的后果所经历的被奴役的非洲裔美国人。浸信会的详尽研究工作提出了三个主张支持这一论点。第一，奴隶制是国家发展的催化剂，反过来又推动了奴隶制的迅速扩张。换句话说，正是奴隶制的发展将这个脆弱的国家联系在一起。早期的总统，如托马斯·杰斐逊，“帮助塑造了国家的地理和经济增长政策，围绕着奴隶制的扩张”，因为奴隶制的“扩张产生了一个更统一的政府和一个基于新的全国性资本市场的更强大的经济”（第11页）。令人耳目一新的是浸信会对投资公司--北美土地公司、南卡罗来纳州、田纳西州和弗吉尼亚州亚祖公司、佐治亚州-密西西比土地公司--如何影响早期领土扩张的描述。例如，他展示了金钱是如何影响扩张性政治的，比如当“国会议员审查他们的直接经济利益，并选择确保密西西比成为一个奴隶州”（第29页）。国家的征服，驱逐和大规模屠杀的土著美国人使奴隶制的边界可能产生廉价的土地被奴役的非洲裔美国人工作。例如，安德鲁·杰克逊将军征服了西南边境，开放了数千平方英里的土地：“政府保护了奴隶的企业，反过来，他们通过占领和开发领土来扩大美国的权力”（第64页）。奴隶制的传播也“结合在一起，因为德斯蒙德·贾格莫汉（jagmohan@princeton.edu）是普林斯顿大学政治学博士后研究助理。
I n her presidential address at the 86th Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Judith Shklar reminded her audience that the nation had “embarked on two experiments simultaneously: one in democracy, the other in tyranny,” and by tyranny she meant the “early and painless acceptance” of the “prevalence of chattel slavery long after it had disappeared in the rest of the European world.” She was insisting that slavery is a constitutive feature of “our political development” and thus imploring us to recover its intellectual importance for the study of American politics (JudithN. Shklar, “Redeeming American Political Theory,” American Political Science Review, 1991). Edward E. Baptist’s The Half Has Never Been Told does just that, and more. It is a profound and erudite study of slavery from the American Revolution to the birth of the Civil War. Simply put, Baptist argues that slavery built the modern United States. But to see how, we have to refute two enduring assumptions. First is the idea that slavery was a “peculiar institution” that was incidental to the nation’s political development, and second is the view that slavery was antithetical to capitalism. Both assumptions originated with abolitionist critics of slavery, who singled out the institution’s political immorality; slavery’s ultimate crime was its denial of liberal rights and protections to enslaved African Americans. They thus depicted slavery in stark contrast to the nation’s supposed liberal and democratic institutions and values. From their political platform, abolitionists drew a weak economic conclusion: Slavery was unproductive, unprofitable, and inefficient. Slaveholders unwittingly agreed with their critics when they portrayed themselves as benevolent paternalists, rather than exploitative profit seekers. Handed down by historians, such rhetoric has hardened into truth. We, too, want to believe that free labor is more ethical and more efficient than slavery (p. 130). “If slavery was outside of US history, for instance—if indeed it was a drag and not a rocket booster to American economic growth—then slavery was not implicated in US growth, success, power, and wealth,” Baptist writes (p. xix). To the contrary, he argues that slavery was essential to the economic and political development of the nation. And in seamless and convincing prose, he redirects larger political and economic observations to the micro level, to the phenomenological consequences experienced by enslaved African Americans. Baptist’s exhaustively researched work makes three claims in support of this argument. The first is that slavery was a catalyst of state development, which, in turn, fueled the rapid expansion of slavery. In other words, it was slavery’s growth that linked the fragile nation together. Early presidents like Thomas Jefferson “helped shape the nation’s policy of geographic and economic growth around the expansion of slavery” because slavery’s “expansion yielded a more unified government and a stronger economy based on new nationwide capital markets” (p. 11). What is fresh is Baptist’s account of how investment companies—the North American Land Company; South Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia Yazoo Companies; the Georgia-Mississippi Land Company—influenced early territorial expansion. For example, he shows how money influenced expansionary politics, such as when “congressmen examined their direct financial interests and chose to ensure that Mississippi became a slave state” (p. 29). The state’s conquest, expulsion, and mass murder of Native-Americans made slavery’s frontier possible by yielding cheap land to be worked by enslaved African Americans. For example, General Andrew Jackson conquered the southwestern frontier, opening thousands of square miles: “The government protected the enslavers’ enterprise, and they, in turn, extended the power of the American state by occupying and developing territory” (p. 64). Slavery’s spread also “yoked together for a very Desmond Jagmohan (jagmohan@princeton.edu) is a Postdoctoral Research Associate in Politics at Princeton University.