Unfree Markets: The Slaves' Economy and the Rise of Capitalism in South Carolina (Columbia Studies in the History of U.S. Capitalism)

The everyday lives of enslaved people were filled with the backbreaking tasks that their enslavers forced them to complete. But in spare moments, they found time in which to earn money and obtain goods for themselves. Enslaved people led vibrant economic lives, cultivating produce and raising livestock to trade and sell. They exchanged goods with nonslaveholding whites and even sold products to their enslavers. Did these pursuits represent a modicum of freedom in the interstices of slavery, or did they further shackle enslaved people by other means? Justene Hill Edwards illuminates the inner workings of the slaves’ economy and the strategies that enslaved people used to participate in the market. Focusing on South Carolina from the colonial period to the Civil War, she examines how the capitalist development of slavery influenced the economic lives of enslaved people. Hill Edwards demonstrates that as enslavers embraced increasingly capitalist principles, enslaved people slowly lost their economic autonomy. As slaveholders became more profit-oriented in the nineteenth century, they also sought to control enslaved people’s economic behavior and capture the gains. Despite enslaved people’s aptitude for enterprise, their market activities came to be one more part of the violent and exploitative regime that shaped their lives. Drawing on wide-ranging archival research to expand our understanding of racial capitalism, Unfree Markets shows the limits of the connection between economic activity and freedom. "Centering the slaves' economy in the rapid growth of capitalist enterprise in the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century American South, Justene Hill Edwards explores the detrimental influence of capitalist innovation on slaves' economic pursuits in South Carolina, the most pro-slavery state in America. Examining the strategies enslaved people used to make money and obtain goods for themselves, and one of the fullest accounts to date of slaves' market practices, Edwards argues that the slaves' economy helped to fuel South Carolina's economic growth--which meant a continuation of the violent and exploitative regime that shaped slave's lives. Enslaved peoples' slow loss of economic autonomy coincided with the capitalist evolution of slavery. Edwards starts by looking at the economic activity of slaves during colonial era South Carolina, considering how they navigated the laws and institutions of slavery in trading with both free and enslaved people. She looks at how the social unrest of the American Revolution provided opportunity for increased trade, and explores the growing autonomy enslaved people saw in trade, often formalized through the courts. However, as the plantations turned their attention to increased profitability, plantation owners increasingly looked to their slave's economic activity as an source of profit. So began the erosion of economic autonomy, as the gains from trade were increasingly captured by slave owners"-- Provided by publisher Introduction: Capitalism in the Economic Lives of Enslaved People -- "Negroes Publickly Cabaling in the Streets": The Enslaved Economy and the Culture of Slavery in Colonial South Carolina -- "This Infamous Traffick": Revolution in the Economic Lives of the Enslaved -- "A Dangerous and Growing Practice": Enslaved Entrepreneurship and the Cotton Economy in the Early-National Era -- "The Facility of Obtaining Money": Violence, Fear, and Accumulation in the Vesey Era -- "The Negroes' Accounts": Capitalist Influences in the Slaves' Economy -- "A Monstrous Nuisance": Enslaved Enterprises, Class Anxieties, and the Coming of the Civil War -- Conclusion: "Freedom Ain't Nothin": Capitalism and Freedom in the Shadow of Slavery