Book On Slavery Was Too Hard On White People, Says The Economist (Update)

The Economist magazine wrote a review of "The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism."

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The Economist reviewed a new book by Cornell professor Edward E. Baptist this week titled The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism. 

It's a look at the forced migration and brutal torture slave owners used to increase plantation efficiency and make slavery ever more profitable. Baptist writes that it was slavery that fueled a young America's rise as an economic superpower (and an unpaid labor force of millions will do that for you). 

The book's intention is to force "readers to reckon with the violence at the root of American supremacy," and it makes use of the accounts of actual slaves, newspapers of the time, and plantation records to do so. 

But a reviewer for The Economist, a magazine that has existed since the time of slavery, apparently had one huge issue with the book: it was way too tough on the white people. 

Here's a quote from the review in which the author references Hugh Thomas' book The Slave Trade, which the reviewer obviously seems to prefer because of its more "objective" (read: sympathetic to white people) approach. 


"Unlike Mr Thomas, Mr Baptist has not written an objective history of slavery. Almost all the blacks in his book are victims, almost all the whites villains."

The reviewer also seems to think that maybe the meteoric rise in cotton production that came in the 1860s was a result of kinder, gentler slave owners coaxing their slaves to work harder by treating them nicer, because that sounds totally plausible given the accounts we have.


"Slave owners surely had a vested interest in keeping their “hands” ever fitter and stronger to pick more cotton. Some of the rise in productivity could have come from better treatment."

Ta-Nehisi Coates, who writes for The Atlantic, a magazine with as long and prestigious a history as The Economist, but one that seems to have editors who actually prevent insane reviews from appearing in its pages, had some of the best thoughts about the whole thing on Twitter:

Maybe it has something to do with The Economist not using bylines. I can't imagine anyone wanting their name on that. 

UPDATE: After a huge (reasonable) backlash, The Economist essentially pulled the review from their website and published an apology in its place:

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[Via The Economist]

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