Several recent books have re-examined the history of US slavery and its relationship to both capitalism and the American Revolution, Here I make suggestions about how viewing these works through the lens of anthropological studies of slavery historically around the globe opens up an additional entry into understanding both colonial slavers’ desire for revolution and British desire for abolition and an end to the slave trade. Conjoining the anthropology of slavery to the history of the early development of coerced labor in the colonies and early republic can enhance our understanding of the continuing, though much diminished within the US itself, use of coerced labor as an integral part of US capitalism. This analysis brings together several concepts that are central to understanding processes of racialization, past and ongoing: state coercion, the social reproduction of labor, and capital as a relationship of dispossession, thus allowing the development of a different reading of both US history and the origins of US capitalism. This argument is then extended to a brief suggestion of the ways this perspective clarifies the continuing role of coerced labor and its relevance to mass incarceration and immigrant detention.
BeckertS (2015) Empire of Cotton: A Global History, New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
7.
BeckertSRockmanS (2016a) Introduction: Slavery’s capitalism. In: BeckertSRockmanS (eds) Slavery’s Capitalism: A New History of American Economic Development, Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, pp. 1–27.
8.
Beckert S and Rockman S (eds) (2016b) Slavery’s Capitalism: A New History of American Economic Development. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press.
9.
BerlinI (1998) Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
10.
BlackmonD (2008) Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II, New York: Doubleday.
11.
BrooksJ (2002) Captives and Cousins: Slavery, Kinship, and Community in the Southwest Borderlands, Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press.
12.
BrownK (1996) Good Wives, Nasty Wenches, and Anxious Patriarchs: Gender, Race, and Power in Colonial Virginia, Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press.
13.
BruceP (1935) Economic History of Virginia in the Seventeenth Century, Vol. I, New York: Peter Smith.
14.
BuckP (1994) ‘Arbeit Macht Frei’: Racism and bound, concentrated labor in U.S. prisons. Urban Anthropology and Studies of Cultural Systems and World Economic Development23(4): 331–372.
15.
BuckP (2001) Worked to the Bone: Race, Class, Power, and Privilege in Kentucky, New York: Monthly Review Press.
BuckP (2012) Whither whiteness? Empire, state, and the re-ordering of whiteness. Transforming Anthropology20(2): 105–117.
18.
BuckP (2014) Stating punishment: The struggle over the right to punish. North American Dialogue17(1): 31–43.
19.
ÇağlarASchillerN (in press) Migrants and City-Making: Multiscalar Perspectives on Dispossession, Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
20.
CampbellG (2004) Introduction: Slavery and other forms of unfree labour in the Indian Ocean world. In: CampbellG (ed.) The Structure of Slavery in Indian Ocean Africa and Asia, Portland, OR: Frank Cass, pp. vii–xxxii.
21.
Chatterjee I and Eaton M (eds) (2006) Slavery and South Asian History. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.
22.
ChildsD (2015) Slaves of the State: Black Incarceration from the Chain Gang to the Penitentiary, Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.
23.
ChomskyA (2014) Undocumented: How Immigration Became Illegal, Boston, MA: Beacon Press.
DanielsP (1972) The Shadow of Slavery: Peonage in the South, 1901–1969, Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press.
26.
DavisA (2003) Are Prisons Obsolete?, New York: Seven Stories Press.
27.
Davis S and Smith T (n.d.) Corporate Strategies for Electronic Recycling: A Tale of Two Systems. A publication of the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition and the Computer TakeBack Campaign. Available at: http://svtc.org/wp-content/uploads/prison_final.pdf (accessed 15 December 2015).
28.
De Genova N and Peutz N (eds) (2010) The Deportation Regime: Sovereignty, Space, and the Freedom of Movement. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
29.
DewC (1994) Bond of Iron: Master and Slave at Buffalo Forge, New York: W.W. Norton and Company.
30.
Du Bois W (1963 [1935]) Black Reconstruction in America. New York: Russell and Russell.
31.
DuVernay A (dir.) (2016) 13th: From Slave to Criminal with One Amendment. Netflix (film).
32.
EatonR (2006) Introduction. In: ChatterjeeIEatonR (eds) Slavery and South Asian History, Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, pp. 1–16.
33.
Equal Justice Initiative (2015) Lynching in America: Confronting the Legacy of Racial Terror. Montgomery, AL.
34.
FieldsKFieldsB (2014) Racecraft: The Soul of Inequality in American Life, New York: Verso.
35.
FinleyM (1973[1959]) Was Greek civilization based on slave labor? In: GenoveseE (ed.) The Slave Economies, Vol. I, New York: John Wiley and Sons, pp. 19–45.
36.
Friedman J (ed.) (2003) Globalization, the State, and Violence. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press.
37.
GallayA (2002) The Indian Slave Trade: The Rise of the English Empire in the American South, 1670–1717, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
38.
GiddensA (1987) The Nation-State and Violence: Volume Two of a Contemporary Critique of Historical Materialism, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
39.
GillS (1992) Economic globalization and the internationalization of authority: Limits and contradictions. Geoforum23(3): 269–283.
40.
GilmoreR (2007) Golden Gulag: Prisons, Surplus, Crisis, and Opposition in Globalizing California, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
41.
GlassmanJ (2006) Primitive accumulation, accumulation by dispossession, accumulation by ‘extra-economic’ means. Progress in Human Geography30(5): 608–625.
42.
GoldbergD (2002) The Racial State, Malden MA: Blackwell Publishing.
43.
GoldstoneL (2005) Dark Bargain: Slavery, Profits, and the Struggle for the Constitution, New York: Walker and Company.
44.
GottschalkM (2015) Caught: The Prison State and the Lockdown of American Politics, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
45.
GrayL (1958) History of Agriculture in the Southern United States to 1860, Vol. I, Gloucester, MA: Peter Smith.
46.
GuyattN (2016) Bind Us Apart: How Enlightened Americans Invented Racial Segregation, New York: Basic Books.
47.
HämäläinenP (2008) The Comanche Empire, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
48.
HanesS (2015) Labor trafficking is everywhere and nowhere: An overview of 21st century slavery. Christian Science Monitor Projects. 26 October. Available at: http://projects.csmonitor.com/labor-trafficking-overview (accessed 7 April 2017).
49.
HaneyI (2006) White By Law: The Legal Construction of Race (revised and updated), New York: New York University Press.
50.
HarveyD (2004) The ‘new’ imperialism: Accumulation by dispossession. Socialist Register40: 63–87.
51.
HarveyD (2013) Rebel Cities: From the Right to the City to the Urban Revolution, Brooklyn, NY: Verso.
52.
HobsbawmE (1973[1960]) The seventeenth century in the development of capitalism. In: GenoveseE (ed.) The Slave Economies, Vol. I, New York: John Wiley and Sons, pp. 145–160.
53.
HornJ (1994) Adapting to a New World: English Society in the Seventeenth Century Chesapeake, Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press.
54.
HorneG (2014) The Counter-Revolution of 1776: Slave Resistance and the Origins of the United States of America, New York: New York University Press.
55.
IsenbergN (2016) White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America, New York: Viking.
56.
JenningsM (2011) New Worlds of Violence: Cultures and Conquest in the Early American Southeast, Knoxville, TN: University of Tennessee Press.
57.
JonesJ (1992) The Dispossessed: America’s Underclasses from the Civil War to the Present, New York: Basic Books.
58.
JordonDWalshM (2007) White Cargo: The Forgotten History of Britain’s White Slaves in America, New York: New York University Press.
59.
KangS (2006) ‘The New Peculiar Institution’: International Labor Standards, Human Rights and the Prison Labor in the Contemporary United States, San Diego, CA: Paper presented at the International Studies Association.
60.
Kapferer B (ed.) (2004) State, Sovereignty, War: Civil Violence in Emerging Global Realities. New York: Berghahn Books.
61.
KasmirSCarbonellaA (2008) Dispossession and the anthropology of labor. Critique of Anthropology28(1): 5–25.
62.
KleinM (1993a) Introduction: Modern European expansion and traditional servitude in Africa and Asia. In: KleinM (ed.) Breaking the Chains: Slavery, Bondage, and Emancipation in Modern Africa and Asia, Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, pp. 3–36.
63.
Klein M (ed.) (1993b) Breaking the Chains: Slavery, Bondage, and Emancipation in Modern Africa and Asia. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press.
64.
KuppermanK (2000) Indians and English: Facing Off in Early America, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
LovejoyP (2012) Transformations in Slavery: A History of Slavery in Africa, 3rd ed, New York: Cambridge University Press.
69.
MajewskiJ (2016) Why did Northerners oppose the expansion of slavery? Economic development and education in the limestone South. In: BeckertSRockmanS (eds) Slavery’s Capitalism: A New History of American Economic Development, Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, pp. 277–298.
70.
MartinB (2016) Neighbor-to-neighbor capitalism: Local credit networks and the mortgaging of slaves. In: BeckertSRockmanS (eds) Slavery’s Capitalism: A New History of American Economic Development, Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, pp. 107–121.
71.
MartinotS (2003) The Rule of Racialization, Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press.
72.
MbembeA (2003) Necropolitics. Public Culture15(1): 11–40.
73.
MeillassouxC (1991[1986]) The Anthropology of Slavery: The Womb of Iron and Gold, trans, Dasnois A. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
74.
MiersS (2004) Slavery: A question of definition. In: CampbellG (ed.) The Structure of Slavery in Indian Ocean Africa and Asia, Portland, OR: Frank Cass, pp. 1–16.
75.
MilesR (1987) Capitalism and Unfree Labor: Anomaly or Necessity?, New York: Tavistock.
76.
MillerJ (2004) A theme in variations: A historical schema of slaving in the Atlantic and Indian Ocean regions. In: CampbellG (ed.) The Structure of Slavery in Indian Ocean Africa and Asia, Portland, OR: Frank Cass, pp. 169–194.
77.
MillerJ (2012) The Problem of Slavery as History: A Global Approach, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
78.
MillsC (1997) The Racial Contract, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
79.
MorganJ (2004) Laboring Women: Reproduction and Gender in New World Slavery, Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press.
80.
MorganP (1991) British encounters with Africans and African-Americans, circa 1600–1780. In: BailynBMorganP (eds) Strangers within the Realm, Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, pp. 157–219.
81.
MorganP (1998) Slave Counterpoint: Black Culture in the Eighteenth-Century Chesapeake and Low Country, Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press.
RiceJ (2012) Tales from a Revolution: Bacon’s Rebellion and the Transformation of Early America, New York: Oxford University Press.
91.
RobinsonC (2000[1983]) Black Marxism: The Making of the Black Radical Tradition, Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press.
92.
RoodD (2016) An international harvest: The second slavery, the Virginia-Brazil connection, and the development of the McCormick Reaper. In: BeckertSRockmanS (eds) Slavery’s Capitalism: A New History of American Economic Development, Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, pp. 87–104.
93.
RothmanJ (2016) The contours of cotton capitalism: Speculation, slavery, and economic panic in Mississippi, 1832–1841. In: BeckertSRockmanS (eds) Slavery’s Capitalism: A New History of American Economic Development, Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, pp. 122–145.
94.
RutmanDRutmanA (1984) A Place in Time: Middlesex County, Virginia 1650–1750, New York: W.W. Norton & Company.
95.
SchamaS (2005) Rough Crossings: The Slaves, the British, and the American Revolution, New York: HarperCollins Books.
96.
Sharma A and Gupta A (eds) (2006) The Anthropology of the State: A Reader. Malden, MA: Blackwell.
97.
SchermerhornC (2016) The coastwise slave trade and a mercantile community of interest. In: BeckertSRockmanS (eds) Slavery’s Capitalism: A New History of American Economic Development, Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, pp. 209–224.
98.
ShankmanA (2016) Capitalism, slavery, and the new epoch: Mathew Carey’s 1819. In: BeckertSRockmanS (eds) Slavery’s Capitalism: A New History of American Economic Development, Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, pp. 243–261.
99.
ShklarJ (1991) American Citizenship: The Quest for Inclusion, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
100.
ShulerJ (2009) Calling Out Liberty: The Stono Slave Rebellion and the Universal Struggle for Human Rights, Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi.
101.
SilverP (2008) Our Savage Neighbors: How Indian War Transformed Early America, New York: W.W. Norton & Company.
102.
SteinfeldR (2001) Coercion, Contract, and Free Labor in the Nineteenth Century, New York: Cambridge University Press.
103.
StevensJ (1999) Reproducing the State, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
104.
SubletteNSubletteC (2016) The American Slave Coast: A History of the Slave-Breeding Industry, Chicago, IL: Lawrence Hill Books.
105.
TaylorA (2013) The Internal Enemy: Slavery and War in Virginia, 1772–1832, New York: W. W. Norton & Company.
106.
TaylorA (2016) American Revolutions: A Continental History, 1756–1804, New York: W. W. Norton & Company.
107.
ThorntonJ (1998) Africa and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World, 1400–1800, 2nd edn, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
108.
TillyC (1985) War making and state making as organized crime. In: EvansP (eds) Bringing the State Back In, New York: Cambridge University Press, pp. 169–191.
109.
TillyC (1992) Coercion, Capital, and European States, AD 990–1990, Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing.
Vogel R (2007) Transient servitude: The U.S. Guest Worker Program for exploiting Mexican and Central American workers. Monthly Review, January. Available at: http://monthlyreview.org/0107vogel.htm. (accessed 12 December 2006).
112.
WacquantL (2009) Punishing the Poor: The Neoliberal Government of Social Insecurity, Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
113.
WebbS (1995[1984]) 1676: The End of American Independence, Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press.
114.
WeberM (1973[1896]) The social causes of the decay of ancient civilization. In: GenoveseE (ed.) The Slave Economies, Vol. I, New York: John Wiley and Sons, pp. 46–67.
115.
Weber M (2015 [1919]) Politics as a vocation. In: Weber M, Rationalism and Modern Society, trans and ed. Waters T and Waters D. New York: Palgrave Books, 129–198.
116.
Whitehead T (2007) Barriers to successful reentry and perceptions of such barriers. Final Report for the Violence Reduction Program, Ethnography, Vol. 3. The Cultural Systems Analysis Group, University of Maryland.
117.
WilliamsB (1989) A class act: Anthropology and the race to nation across ethnic terrain. Annual Review of Anthropology18: 401–444.
118.
WilliamsE (1994[1944]) Capitalism and Slavery, Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press.
119.
WrightG (1990) Racial Violence in Kentucky, 1865–1940: Lynchings, Mob Rule, and ‘Legal Lynchings’, Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press.
