Through the Prism of Slavery: Labor, Capital, and World Economy

This thoughtful book explores the contested relationship between slavery and capitalism. Tracing slavery's integral role in the formation of a capitalist world economy, Dale W. Tomich reinterprets the development of the world economy through the ""prism of slavery."" Through a sustained critique of Marxism, world-systems theory, and new economic history, the author develops an original conceptual framework for answering theoretical and historical questions about the nexus between slavery and the world economy

World market and American slavery: problems of historical method -- World of capital, worlds of labor: reworking class in global perspective -- The "second slavery": bonded labor and the transformation of the nineteenth century world economy -- World slavery and Caribbean capitalism: the Cuban sugar industry, 1760-1868 -- Spaces of slavery: times of freedom: rethinking Caribbean history in world perspective -- Small islands & huge comparisons: Caribbean plantations, historical unevenness, & capitalist modernity -- White days, black days: the working day and the crisis of slavery in the French Caribbean -- Une petite guine: provision ground and plantation in Martinique, 1830-1870 -- Contested terrains: houses, provision grounds, and the reconstitution of labor in post-emancipation Martinique