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The Half Has Never Been Told
560 pages, 2016
history
999 booksAmericans tend to cast slavery as a pre-modern institution—the nation’s original sin, perhaps, but isolated in time and divorced from America’s later success. But to do so rob the millions who suffered in bondage of their full legacy. As historian Edward Baptist reveals in The Half Has Never Been Told, the expansion of slavery in the first eight decades after American independence drove the evolution and modernization of the United States.
In the span of a single lifetime, the South grew from a narrow coastal strip of worn-out tobacco plantations to a continental cotton empire, and the United States grew into a modern, industrial, and capitalist economy. Until the Civil War, Baptist explains, the most important American economic innovations were ways to make slavery ever more profitable. Through forced migration and torture, slave owners extracted continual increases in efficiency from enslaved African Americans.
Edward E. Baptist explores the brutal reality of slavery and its significant contribution to the economic growth of the United States. He argues that the forced labor of enslaved people was the driving force behind America's economic boom in the 19th century.
The book paints a vivid picture of the inhumane conditions and brutal treatment that enslaved people endured. Baptist's research shows that the physical and psychological torture was a deliberate strategy to maximize productivity.
Baptist digs into the role of the cotton industry in the expansion of slavery. He reveals that the demand for cotton not only increased the number of enslaved people but also led to the development of new, more brutal methods of forced labor.
The Half Has Never Been Told also looks at the long-term effects of slavery on modern America. Baptist suggests that the racial inequality and social injustice we see today are directly linked to the legacy of slavery.
Baptist's book is a reminder of the many untold stories of enslaved people. He encourages readers to see beyond the numbers and statistics, and to recognize the individual human experiences and the resilience of those who endured slavery.
