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

At the turn of the 19th century, a small number of countries, “beginning with Great Britain, [are] shifting onto a path of sustained economic expansion that […] produce[s] higher standards of living and vastly increased wealth for some—and poverty for others” (79). This shift is variously known as “modernization, the industrial revolution, the Great Divergence” (80). Cotton is at the heart of this shift. Cotton cloth had previously been a hand-woven luxury product but “mechanical innovations and a new division of labor” (80) swiftly turn it into a booming industry in 19th-century Britain. A “new class of factory-owning entrepreneurs” extract “massive profits” and “textile revenues” (80), significantly boosting the British economy. However, technical innovation counts for nothing if the machines do not have raw products to process, and the US is struggling to meet the growing demand. This begins to change in the early 19th century, when “the rapid expansion of Mississippi Valley slave labor camps […] enable[s] the United States to seize control of the world export market for cotton” (82), with cotton accounting for forty-two percent of the value of US exports by 1820. 

New Orleans is central to this expanding industry and much of the trade is focused around Maspero’s, a “Coffee-House” that sells alcohol rather than coffee and in which the proprietor, Maspero, makes most of his money “providing a place for others to meet and speculate” (83).