Abstract
Enslaving others is profitable, but that does not mean that it benefits the overall economy. Picking up the metaphor of Frederic Bastiat’s parable of the window from Chap. 1, this chapter discusses the most obvious economic impact of slavery, the creation of wealth for enslavers. This chapter surveys the historiography of the profitability of slavery as well as of the negative externalities or pollution created by the enslavement of others, through discussion of the work of Daron Acemoglu, Edward Atkinson, Kevin Bales, Jean Bodin, Henry Brougham, John E. Cairnes, William Channing, Augustin Cochin, Joseph Conder, Frederich Engels, Stanley Engerman, Robert Fogel, Benjamin Franklin, Lewis C. Gray, Alexander Hamilton, Hinton Helper, Johann Herder, Siddarth Kara, John Majewski, John Millar, Ulrich Phillips, Arthur Pigou, Malachy Postlethwayt, Carl Schurz, Samuel Sewall, Adam Smith, and Gavin Wright, among others. Wright critiques the economic models of historians of capitalism, including Ed Baptist.
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Wright, R.E. (2017). That Which Is Seen: Enslavers’ Profits. In: The Poverty of Slavery. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-48968-1_5
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