What are the main arguments of the New History of Capitalism and how do they inform interpretations of slavery’s role in American economic growth?

1. The core claims of the New History of Capitalism

Proponents assembled in volumes such as Slavery’s Capitalism assert that slavery was integral to U.S. economic growth between the Revolution and the Civil War, supplying the labor, credit instruments, and institutional practices that undergirded entrepreneurship, banking, accounting, and transatlantic trade—so much so that slavery becomes “indispensable” to understanding national development ^{[2] [1]}. Editors Sven Beckert and Seth Rockman frame the issue not as whether slavery was “capitalist” but as a refusal to treat slavery as external to American capitalism; instead they place slave labor and its markets at the heart of rising nineteenth‑century American capitalism ^{[1] [4]}.

2. Mechanisms and evidence marshaled by the NHC

The NHC documents concrete mechanisms: plantation “scientific management” and labor control fostered techniques of supervision and production; the mortgage and sale of enslaved people created new credit instruments and interregional finance; cotton’s global demand linked Southern planters to Northern and European capital, shipping, and manufacturing; and international bankers and post‑panic credit networks deepened market integration around the slave economy ^{[5] [6] [7]}. Contributors argue that these institutional developments—credit extension, offshore investment, and commodification of human capital—reshaped American political economy and enabled investment patterns often attributed to “free market” innovators ^{[1] [7]}.

3. How the NHC reframes slavery’s role in growth

By emphasizing institutions and interdependence, the NHC shifts interpretation from a story of isolated Southern backwardness to one where the slave economy was enmeshed with Northern commerce and global markets, thereby suggesting slavery helped create the legal, managerial, and financial scaffolding for modern capitalism in the United States ^{[6] [8]}. This reframing contests older narratives that either minimized slavery’s economic importance or assumed a clean separation between “capitalist” North and “slave” South, instead treating the rise of American capitalism as contingent and mutually reinforcing with slavery ^[4].

4. Scholarly debate and pointed critiques

The argument has sparked vigorous pushback: some reviewers and economic historians caution that the claim slavery was the primary engine of U.S. capitalism is asserted more boldly than it is conclusively proven, noting gaps on comparative regional development and counterfactuals about capital formation ^{[2] [8]}. Critics from heterodox and free‑market perspectives argue slavery may have crowded out physical capital and hindered industrialization—citing comparative work and models suggesting slavery’s effects were complex or even growth‑retarding in some contexts ^{[3] [9]}. Leading reviewers also note the NHC’s selective emphases—powerfully reconstructing market ties but sometimes downplaying alternative influences like non‑slave industrial investment and resistance traditions ^{[8] [10]}.

5. Stakes, agendas, and the future of the debate

Beyond technical historiography, the NHC operates in an intellectual and political ecosystem: its editors and contributors aim to recenter enslaved people in narratives of American economic achievement and to interrogate claims that markets naturally yield freedom ^{[1] [4]}. Opponents, ranging from economic historians to ideological journals, have an incentive to defend older periodizations or free‑market mythologies; their critiques emphasize methodological caution and the need for comparative, quantitative tests of broad causal claims ^{[2] [3]}. Ongoing work—empirical, regional, and comparative—will determine whether the NHC’s provocative synthesis becomes a settled paradigm or a contested chapter in economic historiography ^{[9] [4]}.