scholarly journals Rothbard on the Economics of Slavery

2020 ◽  
Vol 22 (4) ◽  
pp. 565-578
Author(s):  
Mark Thornton

Murray Rothbard wrote an unpublished note in the early 1960s on the economics of antebellum slavery. Essentially, it was a criticism of the methodology of the New Economic History, or cliometrics, of which Conrad and Meyer (1958a) was the breakthrough application, on the topic of the profitability of slavery. Rothbard points out that their procedure in no way supports their conclusion that slavery was profitable or their ideological conclusion that the Civil War was necessary to end American slavery.

Author(s):  
Margaret Malamud

American abolitionists not only invoked the Roman allusions and comparisons employed by the revolutionary generation’s fight for liberty from the British crown, but also adapted or subverted them in service of the black struggle for freedom. Rather than rejecting Roman society outright because it was a slaveholding society—the primal “Roman error” from their perspective—many abolitionists instead deployed figures and images from Roman antiquity in their own struggles against the despotism of chattel slavery. Supporters of emancipation and black civil rights, this chapter shows, thus engaged in an intense debate over the correct reception of ancient Rome with proslavery Southerners, who argued that slavery in both Rome and America enabled liberty and civilization. Bringing the discussion into the present day, this chapter offers a contemporary example of arguments over the correct reception of ancient Rome in relation to American slavery and the American Civil War.


Author(s):  
Ilya Sokov

Introduction. Studies of American historians on the Civil War and Reconstruction continue to be central issues in the 21st century. There is an increased public demand for these studies. The author of the analytical review of American publications tries to answer the question of what this interest is related to. Methods. The author of the review uses the methodological tools such as the scientific principle of objectivity, the special historicalcomparative method and the systematic approach to answer this question. Analysis. The author points out the main areas of studying new aspects marked by American historians of the mid-19th century. These areas include the issues and interpretations on military, political, everyday, anthropological, social and cultural, and economic history. Besides, new approaches in peer-reviewed monographs for the comprehensive coverage of the study material of this issue are highlighted. Results. The interest of academicians and the American public to studying the historical period of the Civil War and Reconstruction, on the one hand, tells about carrying the deep psycho-civilizational trauma by all subsequent generations of both white and black Americans at this time, and on the other hand, this war debunks the myth of God’s chosen destiny of the American nation to build a “City on a Hill”. Constant refinements, additions, revisions, and reinterpretations of the events and consequences of the Civil War and Reconstruction in contemporary American historiography only confirm this conclusion. The publications selected by the reviewer on this issue for 2019 not only introduce new American historical works to Russian Americanists, but also provide an opportunity to expand their own research on this issue.


2006 ◽  
Vol 66 (2) ◽  
pp. 271-282 ◽  
Author(s):  
ROGER L. RANSOM

The theme of the 2005 annual meetings of the Economic History Association has beenWar and Economic History: Causes, Costs and Consequences. In this essay I will address this theme by briefly examining the ways in which cliometricians have viewed one particular conflict—The American Civil War—over the past four decades. The first part of my essay deals with the attack, which began at the end of the 1950s, mounted by a group of “New Economic Historians” on the existing explanation of the war; the second part deals with my own adventures as I try to make sense of the economic and political factors that produced the conflict we call the Civil War.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
S.S. Ippolitov

Российская гуманитарная деятельность периода Гражданской войны на территориях, подконтрольных антибольшевистским режимам, и в эмиграции является малоизученной областью отечественной исторической науки, интерес к которой в среде профессиональных историков не ослабевает. Статья посвящена изучению источников различного происхождения, позволяющих сформировать источниковую базу исследования российской гуманитарной деятельности: от фондов Российского общества Красного Креста в Сибири до воспоминаний деятелей Белого движения, от документов Министерства снабжения и продовольствия Омского правительства и его местных органов, касавшихся ситуации с поставками хлеба, до протоколов с именами репрессированных в Крыму сестер милосердия РОКК, хранящихся в Отраслевом государственном архиве Службы безопасности Украины. Особое внимание обращено на богатейшую коллекцию документов Русского заграничного исторического архива в Праге (РЗИА), переданного нашей стране в 1945 г. Корпус документов из состава Пражского архива хранится сегодня в Государственном архиве Российской Федерации. В результате проведенного исследования автор пришел к выводу, что в условиях деградации государственных и муниципальных институтов, развала политической жизни, острого гражданского конфликта, экономического кризиса, охватившего всю территорию бывшей Российской империи, дефицита предметов первой необходимости и продуктов питания российская гуманитарная деятельность не только не была свернута, но и пережила на коротком отрезке времени расцвет. Поэтому определение и описание корпуса источников для изучения этой исторической области по-прежнему остается актуальной задачей.The bulk of sources on Russian humanitarian activity during the Civil War period had been accumulated in the collections of the Prague Archive, a collection of documents that originated in Prague as an institution with the Cultural and Educational Department of the Prague Zemgor in 1923. Later it was called the Russian Historical Archive Abroad in Prague. Thanks to the financial support of the Czechoslovak government and a developed system of representatives, the Archive annually replenished its collection of documents that reflected the activities of Russian emigrants in different countries of the world. And if documents of the government of Admiral Kolchak and his military staff are presented in a fair number, the funds of personal origin are extremely small. Thus, documentary collections, allowing to at least fragmentarily complement the canvas of Russian humanitarian activity during the Civil War are of great value. The Fund of M.L. Kondakov, a representative of the Russian Red Cross Society during the rule of Admiral Kolchak in 1918, contains draft documents and personal correspondence of the author on the Russian Red Cross Societys recovery humanitarian activity in Siberia and the Far East. Among the few funds of personal origin that preserve sources on the history of humanitarian activity during the Civil war and emigration, is the Fund of Vissarion Gurevich, a lawyer and a public figure, who was a member of the Siberian Zemstvo and City Union and a member of the Economic Meetings under the Chief Representative of Admiral Kolchak during the war. Domestic archives have more funds of personal origin of political and public figures, who, to some extent, participated in the activities of the governments of A.I. Denikin and later P.N. Wrangel and managed to evacuate and take out their papers during the Crimean evacuation. The situation with the supply of bread was reflected in the documents of the Ministry of Food Supply and Consumption and its local authorities, as well as the various organisations involved in the procurement. Therefore, the documentary materials created during the daily activities of these agencies are an important source for studying both the humanitarian and financial policies of the White Siberian authorities and the economic history of the region during this period. The Sectoral State Archive of the Security Service of Ukraine has a significant array of documents for the study of Russian humanitarian activity. In 1998, a collection of documents The Legislative Activity of the White Governments of Siberia (JuneNovember 1918) was published. Attempts to carry out human rights activities in Soviet Russia, as part of the ceneral humanitarian canvas of the post-revolutionary era, are reflected in the publication Two Episodes from the Life of Literary Organisations: Report of Deputies of Literary Organisations on a Trip to Moscow in the Case of Arrested Writers and Scholars. The source tells about the events of 2829 August 1919 when the leaders of the so-called National Centre were arrested in Moscow and the lists of members of this organisation were seized.


Author(s):  
Timothy M. Roberts

This chapter discusses Mazzini's influence in the context of the slavery crisis of the 1850s in the United States. That decade, which saw a crisis erupt in Kansas over the question of whether slavery should be allowed to expand, ended dramatically at Harpers Ferry, Virginia, where the violent abolitionist John Brown led a doomed attempt to arm and liberate slaves. Mazzini studied, wrote about, and on occasion attempted to enact popular insurrection and guerilla warfare. His ideas became essential to Brown's ideology and actions, which precipitated the Civil War. The chapter suggests an under-appreciated aspect of Mazzini's influence in America, invites a reassessment of the American sectional crisis of the 1850s for its transatlantic dimensions, and proposes a sobering but important dimension to the historical path of the spread of democratic nationalism.


Author(s):  
Roger Ransom

This chapter examines the following questions: How did the institution of slavery pose an insurmountable obstacle to sectional compromise? What were the “economic costs” of the war to the North and the South? How did the emancipation of four million slaves impact the American economy? What was the economic legacy of the war? The chapter argues that the war was indeed what Charles and Mary Beard termed a “Second American Revolution.” The presence of the “slave power” defeated all efforts at compromise. The wartime expenditures and loss of 750,000 men placed an economic burden that lasted into the twentieth century. Emancipation and passage of the Thirteenth Amendment in 1865 were the enduring accomplishments of the war.


1990 ◽  
Vol 18 (4) ◽  
pp. 493
Author(s):  
Phillip Shaw Paludan ◽  
Iver Bernstein
Keyword(s):  

1975 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-28 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ömer Lutfi Barkan ◽  
Justin McCarthy

The sixteenth century came to an end with the countries of the Ottoman Middle East falling into a grave economic and social crisis which presaged a decisive turning point in their history. The most symptomatic sign of what was, in fact, a structural crisis was a series of popular revolts which appeared most prominently among the Muslim Turkish population of Anatolia. Known as the Celali revolts, these uprisings developed into open civil war against the forces of the Ottoman state, and in their first phase lasted approximately fifteen years, from 1595 to 1610.


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