Captivity's Commerce: The Theory and Methodology of Slaving and Capitalism

Abstract

This article identifies new pathways for integrating African perspectives into debates about the historical relationship between slavery and capitalism. It focuses extensively on the work of African historian Joseph C. Miller (1939–2019), whose concept of “ethno political economics” combined ethnographic and quantitative data and offered a new perspective on Atlantic World history. Building on theorizations of early twentieth-century scholars W.E.B. Du Bois, C.L.R. James, Eric Williams, and others, Miller's analysis foregrounded the simultaneously local and global processes of credit expansion, commercialization, and labor exploitation as foundational to the consolidation of early modern capitalism.