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This detailed analysis of slavery in the antebellum South was written in 1975 in response to the prior year's publication of Robert Fogel and Stanley Engerman's controversial Time on the Cross, which argued that slavery was an efficient and dynamic engine for the southern economy and that its success was due largely to the willing cooperation of the slaves themselves. Noted labor historian Herbert G. Gutman was unconvinced, even outraged, by Fogel and Engerman's arguments. In this book he offers a systematic dissection of Time on the Cross, drawing on a wealth of data to contest that book's most fundamental assertions. A benchmark work of historical inquiry, Gutman's critique sheds light on a range of crucial aspects of slavery and its economic effectiveness. Gutman emphasizes the slaves' responses to their treatment at the hands of slaveowners. He shows that slaves labored, not because they shared values and goals with their masters, but because of the omnipresent threat of 'negative incentives,' primarily physical violence. In his introduction to this new edition, Bruce Levine provides a historical analysis of the debate over Time on the Cross. Levine reminds us of the continuing influence of the latter book, demonstrated by Robert W. Fogel's 1993 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences, and hence the importance and timeliness of Gutman's critique. … (meer)
This ought to be considered a necessary third volume to Robert William Fogel's and Stanley L. Engerman's Time on the Cross. Gutman takes a detailed look at the way they have used and misused sources, ignored potential sources, as well as sometimes dubious statistical methods. It is a devastating critique of a book that garnered a lot of positive press at its release, and which has remained in print up to the present time, even after the revision Without Consent or Contract was released. That book, written by Fogel, retreats from almost every position that Gutman criticized, which would seem to validate Gutman's contentions. The introduction to Without Consent or Contract says that it is a new book rather than a new edition because Time on the Cross generated so much discussion that it is a historical artifact. There is in fact so much discarded that it would have been a new book in any case.
I give three examples of problems pointed out by Gutman; page numbers are from the 2003 reprinting by the University of Illinois press. Fogel and Engerman use an 1860 manuscript census of occupations In Nashville, Tennesee to argue that slaves were not used for prostitution, and to suggest, further, that most white men did not find black women attractive. The only prostitutes are 198 white women and 9 light-skinned free black women. One is forced to ask how light-skinned black women came to exist if white men were not attracted to black women, or white women to black men (the latter is likely to have endly badly.) However, the census explicitly does NOT list the occupations of slaves, so slave prostitutes would not be listed no matter how many may have existed. The census tells us nothing about slaves and prostitution. (p.157 ff)
Fogel and Engerman also suggest that the slaves were generally chaste until marriage, which occurred around 20-years of age for women, based on assuming that the oldest child listed in inventories of slaves was the oldest child of his/her mother, born a year after marriage. Gutman points out that there are many weaknesses in these assumptions. Still births, miscarriages, infant and child mortality, fertility problems, and of course, the sale of children away from their mothers could all mean that either the assumption that the oldest child listed is the woman's oldest child, or that the child was born approximately a year after the mother began her sex life, or both are false. (p.150 ff)
Third, Fogel and Engerman argue, based on invoices for the sale of slaves in New Orleans, that it was rare for slaves to be separated by sales from their partner. They calculate this by assuming that women sold with a child are married women, and women sold without a child are unmarried women. They assert without proof that young children were “virtually always” sold with their mother. Gutman points out that a woman sold out of a childless marriage would be single in their view and a woman whose older children were sold separately would be considered to be single by Fogel and Engerman. He also casts doubt on the assertion that young children can be assumed to be sold with their mother. (p.113 ff)
Gutman continues on with examples of sources cherry-picked for desired information, doubtful reasoning, and inappropriate evidence; a truly devastating critique. ( )
Informatie afkomstig uit de Engelse Algemene Kennis.Bewerk om naar jouw taal over te brengen.
He who reads the inscrutable book of Nature as if it were a Merchant's Ledger, is justly suspected of having never seen that book, but only some School Synopsis thereof; from which if taken for the real book, more error than insight is to be derived.
Thomas Carlyle
...I have that all in figures -- avaerages of deaths in the first cargoes, 25 per cent. -- large average, certainly; they didn't manage the business exactly right; but then the rate of increase in a Christian country averages 25 per cent over what it would have been in Africa. Now, . . . if these had been left in Africa, they would have been all heathen; by getting them over here, they have just as many, and all Christians to boot. Because, you see, the excess of increase balances the percentage of loss, and we make no deduction for interest in those cases.
Harriet Beecher Stowe[?]
Opdracht
Informatie afkomstig uit de Engelse Algemene Kennis.Bewerk om naar jouw taal over te brengen.
For Marta and Neil who are making their own worlds and know what counts
Eerste woorden
Informatie afkomstig uit de Engelse Algemene Kennis.Bewerk om naar jouw taal over te brengen.
Few historical subjects have attracted as much attention, popular or scholarly, as African American slavery. (Introduction to the 2003 Paperback / Bruce Levine)
Time on the Cross: The Economics of American Negro Slavery should be read as theater because it deals with two performances: the performance of the slave economy and the performance of enslaved Afro-Americans.
Few books in United States history, and certainly none about the history of enslaved Afro-Americans published in the past two decades, have attracted more popular notice and given more promise of provoking fierce controversy among historians and even lay persons that Robert William Fogel's and Stanley L. Engerman's Time on the Cross: The Economics of American Negro Slavery. (Introduction)
The Central Theme in T/C: "Black Achievement under Adversity"
Just as southern history has its "central theme," so, too, does T/C in dealing with the beliefs and behavior of enslaved Afro-Americans, that is, in dealing with their social history. (An Overview of T/C)
Citaten
Laatste woorden
Informatie afkomstig uit de Engelse Algemene Kennis.Bewerk om naar jouw taal over te brengen.
It really tells us nothing of importance about the beliefs and behavior of enslaved Afro-Americans.
This detailed analysis of slavery in the antebellum South was written in 1975 in response to the prior year's publication of Robert Fogel and Stanley Engerman's controversial Time on the Cross, which argued that slavery was an efficient and dynamic engine for the southern economy and that its success was due largely to the willing cooperation of the slaves themselves. Noted labor historian Herbert G. Gutman was unconvinced, even outraged, by Fogel and Engerman's arguments. In this book he offers a systematic dissection of Time on the Cross, drawing on a wealth of data to contest that book's most fundamental assertions. A benchmark work of historical inquiry, Gutman's critique sheds light on a range of crucial aspects of slavery and its economic effectiveness. Gutman emphasizes the slaves' responses to their treatment at the hands of slaveowners. He shows that slaves labored, not because they shared values and goals with their masters, but because of the omnipresent threat of 'negative incentives,' primarily physical violence. In his introduction to this new edition, Bruce Levine provides a historical analysis of the debate over Time on the Cross. Levine reminds us of the continuing influence of the latter book, demonstrated by Robert W. Fogel's 1993 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences, and hence the importance and timeliness of Gutman's critique.
Google Books — Bezig met laden...
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I give three examples of problems pointed out by Gutman; page numbers are from the 2003 reprinting by the University of Illinois press. Fogel and Engerman use an 1860 manuscript census of occupations In Nashville, Tennesee to argue that slaves were not used for prostitution, and to suggest, further, that most white men did not find black women attractive. The only prostitutes are 198 white women and 9 light-skinned free black women. One is forced to ask how light-skinned black women came to exist if white men were not attracted to black women, or white women to black men (the latter is likely to have endly badly.) However, the census explicitly does NOT list the occupations of slaves, so slave prostitutes would not be listed no matter how many may have existed. The census tells us nothing about slaves and prostitution. (p.157 ff)
Fogel and Engerman also suggest that the slaves were generally chaste until marriage, which occurred around 20-years of age for women, based on assuming that the oldest child listed in inventories of slaves was the oldest child of his/her mother, born a year after marriage. Gutman points out that there are many weaknesses in these assumptions. Still births, miscarriages, infant and child mortality, fertility problems, and of course, the sale of children away from their mothers could all mean that either the assumption that the oldest child listed is the woman's oldest child, or that the child was born approximately a year after the mother began her sex life, or both are false. (p.150 ff)
Third, Fogel and Engerman argue, based on invoices for the sale of slaves in New Orleans, that it was rare for slaves to be separated by sales from their partner. They calculate this by assuming that women sold with a child are married women, and women sold without a child are unmarried women. They assert without proof that young children were “virtually always” sold with their mother. Gutman points out that a woman sold out of a childless marriage would be single in their view and a woman whose older children were sold separately would be considered to be single by Fogel and Engerman. He also casts doubt on the assertion that young children can be assumed to be sold with their mother. (p.113 ff)
Gutman continues on with examples of sources cherry-picked for desired information, doubtful reasoning, and inappropriate evidence; a truly devastating critique. (