Justene Hill Edwards | Slavery, Freedom, and the Complicated Logics of American Capitalism

What is the relationship between capitalism and freedom in the United States? This question has motivated a generation of scholars who have looked to the history of American slavery to better understand the origins of American capitalism. But scholars have yet to fully grapple with the ways in which enslaved people, both as property and as economic agents, understood the complicated logics of American capitalism. This presentation, organized in collaboration with the Slavery and Freedom workshop, considers the centrality of enslaved people's lived experiences to the history of capitalism in th