The transition of slave systems (and societies with slaves) to capitalism.

[Os Cangaceiros]

I need help with a piece of writing I'm working on. I was wondering if perhaps some of you who are more learned than me in this particular subject can help me out in this relatively simple question, and possibly point me towards resources...

Why did slave systems like the agrarian South and "societies with slaves" (societies that didn't define themselves with their use of slaves...slaves as only one alternative means of organizing labor, for example) ultimately switch over to other systems? Specifically, how did slavery cease to become economically beneficial? (I'm trying to get a large picture of social trends, in contrast to the "great men" view that is commonly used in discussions about slavery.)

[Invader Zim]

It depends on where you are looking. In terms of work on the economics of slavery then one of the more influencial works was by Ulrich Phillips (which you can find a link to the complete work below), who argued that slavery was not profitable and would have disappeared without the civil war. His view re-emerged in the 1960s, supported by the likes of Genovese.

However, if you want to look at the abolition of the actual slave trade its self, then modern historiography argues that the trade was highly profitable right up until its final abolition. They argue that the rise of evangelical morality, combined with Enlightenment ideals made slaveryincompatable with late 18th and early 19th century society. The key people to read on that are James Walvin, David Brion Davis and Roger Anstey.

As for great man histories of slavery, they maybe popular in populist history; but academics began rejecting it back in the 1940s, when studies such as Eric William's Capitalism and Slavery were published (1944). If you do want an early academic history of that nature take a look at W. E. B. Du Bois or Coupland's The British Anti-Slavery Movement (1933).

A bibliography you may find helpful, it is a bit anglo-centric because that is what I know best, but I've highlighted a few works which offer perspectives I think you will find most important: -

Anstey, R., The Atlantic Slave Trade and British Abolition 1760-1810 (Aldershot, 1992).

Blackburn, R., The Overthrow of Colonial Slavery 1776-1848 (London, 1988).

Bolt, C., The Anti-Slavery Movement and Reconstruction: A Study in Anglo-American Co-Operation 1833-77 (London, 1969).

Coupland, R., The British Anti-Slavery Movement (London, 1933).

Davis, D. B., Slavery and Human Progress (Oxford, 1984).

Davis, D. B., The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Revolution: 1770-1823 (Ithaca, 1975).

Delbanco, A., ‘Lincoln and Modernity’, in Shea, W. M., and Huff, P. A. (ed.) Knowledge and Belief in America: Enlightenment Traditions and Modern Religious Thought (Cambridge, 1995).

Drescher, S., Capitalism and Anti-Slavery: British Mobilization in Comparative Perspective (Oxford, 1987).

Drescher, S., Econocide: British Slavery in the Era of Abolition (Pittsburgh, 1977).

Drescher, S., The Mighty Experiment: Free Labour versus Slavery in British Emancipation (Oxford, 2002).

Du. Bois, W. E. B., The Suppression of the African Slave Trade to the United States of America 1638-1870 (New York, 1896).

Eltis, D., The Rise of African Slavery in the Americas (Cambridge, 1999).

Fladeland, Men and Brothers: Anglo-American Antislavery Cooperation (Urbana, 1972).

Fogel, R., The Slavery Debates, 1952-1990: A Retrospective (Baton Rouge, 2003).

Fogel, R., and Engerman, S., Time on the Cross: The Economics of American Negro Slavery (Boston, 1974).

Fogel, R., Without Consent or Contract: The Rise and Fall of American Slavery (New York, 1989).

Frey, S. R., Water from the Rock: Black Resistance in a Revolutionary Age (Princeton, 1991).

Genevose, E. D., The Political Economy of Slavery: Studies in the Economy and the Society of the Slave South (Middleton Conn., 1965.).

Harris, J. W., The Making of the American South: A Short History, 1500-1877 (Oxford, 2005).

Mathews, D. G., Slavery and Methodism: A Chapter in American Morality 1780-1845 (Princeton, 1965).

Menard, R. R., Migrants, Servants, and Slaves: Unfree Labour in Colonial British America (Aldershot, 2001).

Midgley, C., Women Against Slavery: The British Campaigns 1780-1870 (London, 1992).

Morgan, K., Slavery and the British Empire (Oxford, 2007).

Oldfield, J. R., Popular Politics and British Anti-Slavery: The mobilisation of public opinion against the slave trade, 1787-1807 (Manchester, 1995).

Phillips, U. B., American Negro Slavery: A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime (http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/11490) (New York, 1918).

Rice, C. D., The Rise and Fall of Black Slavery (New York, 1975).

Thornton, J., Africa and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World, 1400-1800 (Cambridge, 1998).

Walvin, J., Black Ivory: Slavery in the British Empire (Oxford, 2001).

Walvin, J., Slaves and Slavery: The British Colonial Experience (Manchester, 1992).

Williams, E., Capitalism and Slavery (London, 1964).

[Os Cangaceiros]

Thanks a lot for that info. It will be helpful. :)