The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism facts for kids

The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism is a book by Edward E. Baptist published in 2014 by Basic Books. Baptist makes the argument that slavery played an essential role in the development of American capitalism, and that enslavers and slave traders were entrepreneurs in a capitalist context, using enslaved people not just as the economic engine for the production of cotton, the dominant global commodity of the time, but also as collateral to finance the economic development of the nation.

Among the themes explored in the book are the expansion and practices of chattel slavery, illustrated with both stories of individual enslaved people, based on personal histories such as the autobiography of Charles Ball, and composite stories constructed from a variety of sources in the style of evocative history, as well as statistics and maps showing changes across time; how letters of credit and banks fueled land speculation and the westward expansion of slavery in the Old Southwest; and the roles of New Orleans and the Haitian Revolution in these changes. Historical figures with roles in Baptist's examination of this history include Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, Nicholas Biddle, John C. Calhoun, Henry Clay, and Abraham Lincoln.

Awards

For this book Baptist received the 2015 Hillman Prize, which gave this description of his work:

Told through intimate slave narratives, plantation records, newspapers, and the words of politicians, entrepreneurs, and escaped slaves, The Half Has Never Been Told offers a radical new interpretation of American history. It forces readers to reckon with the violence at the root of American supremacy, but also with the survival and resistance that brought about slavery’s end—and created a culture that sustains America’s deepest dreams of freedom.

He also received the Organization of American Historians' 2015 Avery O. Craven Award, which was renamed the Civil War and Reconstruction Book Award in July 2020.