Stanley Engerman
American economic historian (1936–2023), long at the University of Rochester. With Robert Fogel, co-author of the controversial Time on the Cross (1974) — the cliometric reinterpretation of American slavery as an economically efficient labour system. The 1972 Business History Review paper “The Slave Trade and British Capital Formation in the Eighteenth Century” is the foundational quantitative critique of the Williams thesis: by upper-bound estimates, slave-trade profits were perhaps 1% of British national income, far too small to be the primary source of industrial capital formation. Engerman’s broader research program covered antebellum American slavery, the comparative economics of Caribbean plantation systems, and 19th-century US economic history.
Associated positions
Section titled “Associated positions”- Empire, slavery & unequal exchange — foundational critic of the strong-form Williams thesis.
Key works
Section titled “Key works”- With Robert Fogel: Time on the Cross: The Economics of American Negro Slavery (1974).
- “The Slave Trade and British Capital Formation in the Eighteenth Century: A Comment on the Williams Thesis” (Business History Review, 1972).
- Without Consent or Contract: The Rise and Fall of American Slavery (with Fogel, 1989, 4 vols.).
- Numerous edited volumes on slavery and on Caribbean economic history.