ABSTRACT
It will be recalled that the publication of Time on the Cross, by Robert Fogel and Stanley Engerman, raised a storm of controversy for both its interpretations and methods. The controversy has subsided, but the research of economists on the history of slavery has continued. In his Without Consent or Contract: The Rise and Fall of American Slavery, Robert Fogel again summarizes and synthesizes this research. Fogel has retreated from some of the more controversial interpretations put forward in the earlier book, but, as the title of this chapter indicates, not from what he considers the most important of all the findings reported in Time on the Cross. This is the contention that slavery was not merely profitable for the owners, but a very efficient economic system. If, for Eugene Genovese and Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, slavery made compromises with capitalism without becoming capitalist, Fogel makes the case here that slavery flourished because it was a “highly developed form of capitalism.” As the excerpt below, from Chapter 3 of Fogel's book, makes clear, Fogel's standards for making such judgments are those of “neoclassical” economists—for example, the ability and willingness of slaveowners to respond flexibly to market signals and organize production with maximum efficiency. Compare his analysis of the economics of slavery with that in the essay by Genovese and Fox-Genovese, in Chapter 1, above.
