Year of manufacture: 1989
Author: Fogel Robert William
Genre: Economic history / History of the USA
Publisher: W.W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0-393-01887-3
Format: PDF
Number of pages: 272 (539 in paper version)
English language

This book summarizes the research of the outstanding American historian and economist, Nobel Prize winner in 1993, one of the founders of the Robert Fogel cliometrics on the history of slavery in the New World, especially in the South of the USA.
Argumentedly questioning the conceptions of his predecessors, Vogel argues that the slave-owning plantation farm was highly efficient and viable, providing both huge profits for owners, and a relatively high standard of living for most slaves, as well as stable economic growth for the southern states. However, he draws a conclusion from this very unexpected: it was because of the prospect of slavery that the Civil War in the USA was completely justified, since otherwise the liberation of the Negroes would not have happened. The monograph also covers the history of the abolitionist movement, considering the factors of its successes, failures and ultimate victory (which, according to Vogel, was not predetermined in advance, and in many respects was the result of a short-term coincidence of the interests of different social groups).

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