Includes bibliographical references (pages 299-384) and index.

Introduction. Slavery's capitalism / Sven Beckert and Seth Rockman -- Part 1. Plantation technologies. Toward a political economy of slave labor : hands, whipping-machines, and modern power / Edward E. Baptist -- Slavery's scientific management : masters and managers / Caitlin Rosenthal -- An international harvest : the second slavery, the Virginia-Brazil connection, and the development of the McCormick reaper / Daniel B. Rood -- Part 2. Slavery and finance. Neighbor-to-neighbor capitalism : local credit networks and the mortgaging of slaves / Bonnie Martin -- The contours of cotton capitalism : speculation, slavery, and economic panic in Mississippi, 1832-1841 / Joshua D. Rothman -- "Broad is de road dat leads ter death" : human capital and enslaved mortality / Daina Ramey Berry -- August Belmont and the world the slaves made / Kathryn Boodry -- Part 3. Networks of interest and the North. "What have we to do with slavery?" New Englanders and the slave economies of the West Indies / Eric Kimball -- "No country but their counting-houses" : the U.S.-Cuba-Baltic circuit, 1809-1812 / Stephen Chambers -- The coastwise slave trade and a mercantile community of interest / Calvin Schermerhorn -- Part 4. National institutions and natural boundaries. War and priests : Catholic colleges and slavery in the Age of Revolution / Craig Steven Wilder -- Capitalism, slavery, and the new epoch : Mathew Carey's 1819 / Andrew Shankman -- The market, utility, and slavery in Southern legal thought / Alfred L. Brophy -- Why did Northerners oppose the expansion of slavery? Economic development and education in the limestone South / John Majewski.