Unfree markets: the slaves' economy and the rise of capitalism in South Carolina

"Centering the slaves' economy in the rapid growth of capitalist enterprise in the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century American South, Justene Hill Edwards explores the detrimental influence of capitalist innovation on slaves' economic pursuits in South Carolina, the most pro-slavery state in America.

Examining the strategies enslaved people used to make money and obtain goods for themselves, and one of the fullest accounts to date of slaves' market practices, Edwards argues that the slaves' economy helped to fuel South Carolina's economic growth--which meant a continuation of the violent and exploitative regime that shaped slave's lives.

Enslaved peoples' slow loss of economic autonomy coincided with the capitalist evolution of slavery.

Edwards starts by looking at the economic activity of slaves during colonial era South Carolina, considering how they navigated the laws and institutions of slavery in trading with both free and enslaved