Quite as extreme as in your case but it did seem like for a long time no one was available. No matter where i was going to be where were going to go. Host i think we are out of time but thank you for spending the hour talking to me and the viewers for spending the hour of listening. Guest thing thank you. That was after words Signature Program in which authors of the latest nonfiction books are interviewed by journalists, Public Policy makers, legislators and others familiar with the material. After words airs every weekend at 10 p. M. On saturday, 12 and 9 p. M. On sunday and 12 a. M. On monday. You can also watch after words online. Go to booktv. Org and click on after words after words in the book tv series at topics list on the upper right side of the page. Edward baptist is associate professor of history at Cornell University originally from North Carolina also the editor with the new studies in the history of american slavery and of american capitalism for seidman is schuster. As an ambitious new development on america director for the center of study of race and democracy it is a true marvel groundbreaking research and provocative force scholars of slavery in the aftermath to reconsider longheld assumptions we are pleased to bring you the conversation tonight please join me to welcome edward baptist. [applause]. I will start the stopwatch so i dont go on too long. To meet the economist favorite author of the week. [laughter] i will not talk directly about that yet but we can get into that later. I really happy to be here old friends are here. That is pretty cool. Let me try to describe the book a little bit. And as you will see ive laid out the whole book as the series of metaphors. But that new kind of slavery that the merged right after it achieved independence all but the end of the revolution to some observers look like it would disappear with the head their colonial institutions but it did not instead it transformed the institution. As the world for Cotton Grower after 7090 they began to move south and west. And the trader chaebol the 51 other people in march them to south carolina. And also the sale to his mother years before now they will try to separate him from himself. And then it was backed up with with beings and torture forced to reveal how much work he could do. And the next day and the next day and the next day pushing them to work faster. Even with that cowhide haiti over his head over the next couple decades what would happen would be again and again by the time theyre from the Mississippi Valley cheap cotton made more efficient by africanamericans for the unprecedented transformation. This change would raise millions been billions. Of subsistence agriculture. Role that has challenging implications for every species that lives on the plan and no question the modernization of society benefits many humans but for charles had a foundation of transformation. But then at being moved over to control 80 percent to help make possible in britain and new england as well. As a writer and historian to get a handle on the phenomenon i was inspired by the novel he described American History in the essay of the negro giant. And to have all of them together and then those newspaper ads all the people deprived are part of a system in there across the decades with everything that they tried tear do against their own interests. And demanded more to raise left hand against righthand to divide the working day. As i wrote you could dramatize the image says the feet for the slave trade away from every day they had ever known. The right hand and the left hand the way they were extracted from him. Figure it out the markets but the financing allowed them to buy ever growing armies of the slave migrants. This system the enter the body was building the of wealth of the backs of the enslaved people. They were far wealthier than those in the United States. But what about the second . That is that body of africanamericans in itself a culture and identity called in no small part of the exploited by the corporate relationships by politicians and factory owners and consumers. And in what ways woody think whose bodies are controlled and forced to work against their own controlling interest . This word after they occupied haiti has gone on to become a staple of literature. This was the commentary of slavery supposedly that practitioners can kill a person than raise them up to one that is not really alive anymore. It is really of myth about slavery which of course, the haitian people also intered. As a has something to control over their own bodies. In pushing through debt like separation and we could see in the cotton field that they were no longer truly alive. U. S. Pop cultures saudi actually books more leica replay anxiety the servants turn to the americans on these but it is no accident from Popular Culture to a profit in the 60s but that is a digression. In the 19th century never comerica was in danger of the more classical haitian formulation. By the time they separated with pride in their own labor coming down one conroe after another to become the equivalent of the zombie was a real possibility not just him and all African Americans. As the power grew so too did the ability of African Americans did in spirit in slaver ever in the body for captives. But there is of metaphor in that is the metaphor of the prisoner for. We dont necessarily think of the pow believes those words and we know they dont let prisoners of all nations that develop their own society their modes of resistance this creation and duration of alternative reality with hopes for values that holds those captive this is what keeps a pow from becoming a zombie. The entrepreneurial constantly changing of the 19th century as the author puts it at constant state of war. Says they dropped into a system of slavery after the American Revolution behave more like a pow they were stretched on the route systems of labor control more of them refused far more than the number you gave up. And enslaved people did what they could do to escape the collective identity but those that chose to identify with each other to build a common language to identify with and care for each other. It came from instead of assimilating instead of the oppressors created a history means the process that they try to use and exploit things with a high profit entrepreneurial cut with the evil that they face together. But they put all kinds of force is not one category being stolen if it was those that instructed value lies objecting to a process of destruction yet there was an africanamerican in says the Group Discover their own sense of identity of exploitation and horrific violence. But those two big bodies are not actual bodies but their actual bodies in the book that has a terrific actress instead to metaphorical bodies that grow and entwine and fight each other like siamese twins. That is the story that develops to think about what it will do to recent your the history of the United States and around this one historical process around the enslaved African Americans forced to migrate and whose resistance provided the same time the fuel of america is capitalism the culture and ad is a political momentum to destroy the first persian of american capitalism by the end of the book they each have played their role and as i indicated they brought about emancipation and in 2014 it is still not clear which will be the winner and the struggle continues. Barrow boy to transition to reading of a passage or to. I want to read about charles and i mentioned before and as i suggested before was from maryland and in many ways he encapsulates because he believes in 18 05 the future could be different for him from what his own mother had endured taken by a slave trader when she walked when he was just a boy and sometimes through saving money or through emancipation because the owner has political convictions believes he could have freedom eventually. Because one day he would drive a wagon to a nearby town and set down to eat breakfast and he happened to look out the door he saw his owner and another white man he did not recognize talking. When he walked back out he was quickly surrounded by men in here i will read suddenly he felt the presence out of nowhere of a dozen women had surrounded him before he had time to flicker from one phase to the next someone grabbed him from the caller from behind you are my property now in which his head around he saw the man who was his owner. You must go with me to do georgia he was taken in walk to a place where 51 others were we team in chains. And the fact enslave men were locked together as they marched south is very significant because their feet and their legs were not chained but they were chained together in this prevented them from doing anything except what being in step which prevented resistance very effectively or prevented running away because those men with those chains of iron could not get away quickly or quietly but it did make certain things difficult like normal built bodily functions like going to sleep was very difficult for 51 individuals to manage those simple things. One of the interesting things of the autobiography that he later dictated was the way he talked about his own internal process to be sold and marched south and talks repeated the about his desire to commit suicide. And his frustration he cannot do that because he is chained. The first night as he stepped slumped change nestled between two was just a span of a few links and it took a long time to fall asleep. When at last he slapped his son came to him. The little boy tried to break the chain to set his hands freeze and he could fix the boys broke in world book the hired help in charleses sun faded then his grandfather appeared. Born in africa in the 17 twenties kidnapped as a teenager in the man brought him across the salt water to maryland in they renamed him he never surrendered his own version with those to be gave submissive lee. His father in contrast had tried to be less defiant but then to talk about the rules of slavery the owner grew worried but then they overheard the men talking about the plant is ending his son of bags of dried corn no one in the county ever heard from charles this bothered again. Then would have come for his grandson also that they were dead and gone and these chains with the sun came up there tried to keep time with the rest. Let me just skip to one more story. If you dont mind i will tell you a boston story. Because boston is implicated in this story as you know, in the early 19th century of a group of investors and factory managers and entrepreneurs some of them are called the Boston Associates they spin southern cotton into products for the new england textiles factory is southern slaves. They spend too much time to work in the field to make their own clothes so their owners by them close from the new england to manufacturers. The infrastructure protected the finely woven cloth to impose the tax on british versions of that but they were better for the upper class to allow those to come free of charge to protect those upper consumers. So southern cloth market was very important and dash cotton in particular very conservative group of southern politicians. But there was one man from a very old boston family who had a of a closer connection. He was born in boston and move south when he was a teenager because the father is opening a plantation. When he was 16 he was sent back to harvard where he did his undergrad degree than a unitarian minister and a professor at harvard all ball while his four other brothers were acquiring their own plantations and helping to manage their fathers. One dies but theyre still three brothers. By the early 1840s with the older brother was jerry dash nearing death. As he aged the against brother writes him to say and advises that by the terms of the states civil code to inherit the property the best way to turn it into many is to sell the people he inherited. But you might incur the risk of an abolitionist reporting that the reverend was selling human flesh, etc. Or living off the income of slave labor. 18431 of the first cotton ships to a ride in boston to bring the news of the old third dash he now owns 20 human beings from age of an infant through the ages 65. If their value approached 7,000 in their rich different ways tear calculate but it goes from 300,000 to 1. 7 million in todays dollars. But john the younker even through a complex process had decided he did not want to own the enslaved people any more. Without notifying his brothers he petitioned the legislature to let him free the us leap the sleighs and allow them to stay where they had built families. The brothers learned of his actions after the rejection of the request and one bytes angrily the story would be published in the local paper in all the neighbors would hear about it. And those seven vendor the other 40 unmanageable to send the news up been down to find a lawyer for a freedom suit. John does not agree with that. He travels down to new orleans countryside read the individuals live in and pays for the passage to massachusetts. The interesting thing is pretty clear he did not do this added at the antiracist radicalism there was an unpleasant stuff even for that day. But with his dealings with the formerly enslaved people at the same time what i try tear do i tried to give some credit to do what so many other white americans could not do was to reject his own wealth generating system. It was painfully impossible for almost anyone to directly benefit and to convince himself in the fact that he could do so. With the new set of debates and in charles gets involved and his own little way that emancipation is part of the process leading to the civil war. It even bigger part of the process is what charles did after two were three years working on the Hampton Plantation during aments difficulties he decides the time has come. He moves across the Savannah River waiting until the cornstarch to get ripe and ties his favorite dog to a the tree in the words. He cannot bring with him and he leaves. It takes him four months to get back to maryland because he travels only by night time. 1. He almost died of hypothermia where he fell off our raft. He bin is captured at one point and refuses to give his name or in the information and is later able to escape from that. I will read the last little bit. Said he breaks out of the lindsay jail and then he did the same thing he reached the door of his wifes cabin perhaps he had been replaced then he summoned the courage to knock and his wife responded whos there . He said charles and she said who is this that talks like a husband . So i will stop there and take questions. [applause] you got a great review in the wall street journal. With that body metaphor how might that relate to daviss last book talking about the black body . And at some point he alludes have adieu overlap there . The idea that central is the idea you must reduce africa to an animal. So based on the work that you have done how do we incorporate or get it to the idea with that cultural lessons which that society views that is descended into slaves. It is full of contradictions. I will talk about to contradictions. Stemming the expansion of slavery in the u. S. With whatever effect of the development of civilization as we know it relies relies on his laypeople the pressure there is the debate of increased totals it is 400 almost as fast as the average textile worker as the output is increasing so they are taking much more cotton is they are focused to make people faster every single day. We have great records of that but if they are going faster every day, if they are focused on that, what they are really focused on doing is outsourcing all of the creativity and thinking and innovation of cotton production to enslaved people. We dont have to do a time and motion study with Industrial Production we just set the quota hired to get them to figure it out. Says it deals so many hours and days but if you deal with people who you understand that is every bit as creative and innovative as you, if not more than. The animals dont improve how they do things. But that is one thing. The other thing i point to is we know the specialization of the enslaved women that is important to the system of slavery and i argue it is a feature of the system. Absolutely essential. But what i think is clearings is slave traders use within to enhance their profits to make the commodities more attractive to purchasers. To get in slavers better down in louisiana if they could borrow or not borrow or by slaves or not everything has the tradeoff if you borrow more money you have to pay that back then make calculations like where is the price of cotton going and you do this in the middle of sea of Economic Uncertainty with prices going up and down and sometimes you get into a bubble situation with a cotton boom that you know, will burst. But slave traders want to do get the potential purchasers to override that type of thinking and just by. To what extent they do this intentionally they end up accomplishing the goal to use some actualization not just female slaves but to enhance the extent that people would purchase all slaves to create the slave market to get people to think of it to buy sex. When you introduce sex into a buying and selling situation. With less concern is more then what they buy and credit. But it looks like that is what happened. You dont sexualizing animals. I suppose some do. [laughter] but not on a large scale. [laughter] given the difficulties with victuals end captivity what about the reproduction rates with women . That is that question that we talk about different human societies. But what we see in the United States enslaved women in virginia and maryland have more children by the 17 fifties there of their counterparts in jamaica all kinds of reasons for this is historians have argued for years and years but what is clear from my research is in slave women transported to places like mississippi and alabama have fewer children than their counterparts. There are reasons that youre married if you are take taken away from your family or spouse it will take awhile behalf for you have children willingly and that makes sense also of much harsher diseasing environment with infant death rates and large sugar plantations and Alabama Cotton plantations were critical to the infant death rate in the caribbean plantations. Where there were the biggest we could be sure but it is possible to have a negative population growth rate. Pop