4

It has been claimed (see below for example) that America's relatively high prosperity is the result of slavery, which enabled the development of American capitalism, by using slaves as, well, capital, in various financial endeavors, which in turn, allowed for the financial development of the Industrial Revolution. Is this a historically/economically correct claim? Is slavery the reason that America today enjoys relative wealth and prosperity?

Example Claims: American prosperity was built on slavery and torture

How the Slave Trade Built America

  • 2
    One of the definitions of "too broad" is that a whole book could be written on the topic, and clearly this is the case here, because a whole book has been written. It also seems to be largely opinion-based economics - there is no definitive answer. (I can be persuaded otherwise - please explain what a good answer to the question might look like.) – Oddthinking Jul 20 '15 at 12:20
  • 1
    @Oddthinking Perhaps if I edited the question to state: was the industrial revolution financed by profits from slavery (taking a specific quote from say the nytimes article and using it as my claim)? –  Jul 20 '15 at 12:21
  • 1
    How could the answer to that be no? – Oddthinking Jul 20 '15 at 12:50
  • @eliyahu-g Slaves were a massive part of the economy. In South Carolina and Mississippi in 1860 free people were the minority and slaves were the majority of the population. http://www.loc.gov/item/99447026 – DavePhD Jul 20 '15 at 14:00
  • 4
    However, the industrial revolution proceeded most quickly in the nothern states that didn't have slavery... which was a contributing factor to the civil war. – Ask About Monica Jul 20 '15 at 15:21
  • @eliyahu-g Maybe you could reword the claim to be: "Was the industrial revolution in the United States _primarily_ financed by profits from slavery?". This question should have a (more) definite answer. – John Doucette Jul 20 '15 at 15:33
  • 1
    This does not appear to be falsifiable. You can show there was slavery and you can show links to the prosperity but there were lots of states which used slavery which did poorly later. Saying it's the "result" of slavery can't be proven/disproven. There's no way to know whether there would have been similar prosperity had slavery been outlawed early. – Murphy Jul 20 '15 at 16:27
  • @kbelder The northern states didn't enslave Africans, but they *did* steal highly productive land from the native inhabitants. – gerrit Jul 21 '15 at 10:26

0 Answers0