Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-g7gxr Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-05T02:55:49.028Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

From Memory to Mastery: Accounting for Control in America, 1750–1880

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 February 2015

Abstract

From Memory to Mastery explores the development of commercial numeracy and accounting in America and the English-speaking Atlantic world between 1750 and 1880. Most histories of accounting begin in the factories of England and New England, largely ignoring slave economies. I analyze both traditional sites of innovation, including textile mills and iron forges, and also southern and West Indian plantations. Along several dimensions, the calculative practices of slave owners advanced ahead of northern merchants and manufacturers, and many recorded and analyzed the productivity of their human capital with cruel precision. Following threads from Jamaica and Barbados to the American South, I show how plantation power relations stimulated the development of new accounting practices. The control of planters over their slaves made data easier to collect and more profitable to use. Commercial recordkeeping also expanded in free factories, but in different ways than on southern plantations. The mobility of labor made accounting necessary for keeping track of wages but relatively futile for detailed productivity analysis.

Type
Dissertation Summaries
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s) 2013. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Business History Conference. All rights reserved.

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Bibliography of Works Cited

Books

Beckert, Sven Rockman, Seth Waldstreicher, David, eds. Slavery’s Capitalism: A New History of American Economic Development. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, forthcoming.Google Scholar
Chandler, Alfred D. Henry Varnum Poor, Business Editor, Analyst, and Reformer. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1956.Google Scholar
Chandler, Alfred D. The Visible Hand: The Managerial Revolution in American Business. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1977.Google Scholar
Chaplin, Joyce E. An Anxious Pursuit. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1993.Google Scholar
Cohen, Patricia Cline. A Calculating People: The Spread of Numeracy in Early America. New York: Routledge, 1999.Google Scholar
Engerman, Stanley L Fogel, Robert William. Time on the Cross. Boston: Little Brown, 1974.Google Scholar
Fear, Jeffrey. Organizing Control: August Thyssen and the Construction of German Corporate Management. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005.Google Scholar
Fogel, Robert. Without Consent or Contract. New York: Norton, 1989.Google Scholar
Follett, Richard. The Sugar Masters: Planters and Slaves in Louisiana. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2007.Google Scholar
Gray, Lewis C. History of Southern Agriculture in the United States, vol. 1. Washington, DC: Carnegie Institute, 1933.Google Scholar
Johnson, Thomas H Kaplan, Robert S. Relevance Lost: The Rise and Fall of Management Accounting. Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 1987.Google Scholar
Johnson, Walter. Soul by Soul: Life Inside the Antebellum Slave Market. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999.Google Scholar
Kilbourne, Richard. Debt, Investment, Slaves Credit Relations in East Feliciana Parish, Louisiana, 1825–1885. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1995.Google Scholar
Majewski, John. Modernizing a Slave Economy: The Economic Vision of the Confederate Nation. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2009.Google Scholar
Olmstead, Alan L Rhode, Paul W. Creating Abundance: Biological Innovation and American Agricultural Development. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press, 2008.Google Scholar
Porter, Theodore M. The Rise of Statistical Thinking, 1820–1900. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1986.Google Scholar
Smallwood, Stephanie E. Saltwater Slavery: a Middle Passage from Africa to American Diaspora. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007.Google Scholar
Smith, Mark M. Mastered by the Clock: Time, Slavery, and Freedom in the American South. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997.Google Scholar
Walsh, Lorena Seebach. Motives of Honor, Pleasure, and Profit: Plantation Management in the Colonial Chesapeake, 1607–1763. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010.Google Scholar
Wright, Gavin. Slavery and American Economic Development. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2006.Google Scholar
Yates, JoAnne. Control Through Communication: The Rise of System in American Management. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989.Google Scholar

Articles

Anderson, Ralph V Gallman, Robert E. “Slaves as Fixed Capital: Slave Labor and Southern Economic Development.” Journal of American History 64, no. 1 (June 1, 1977): 2446.Google Scholar
Aufhauser, Keith R. “Slavery and Scientific Management.” Journal of Economic History 33, no. 4 (December 1, 1973): 811–24.Google Scholar
Cooke, Bill. “The Denial of Slavery in Management Studies.” Journal of Management Studies 40, no. 8 (2003): 1895–918.Google Scholar
Fleischman, Richard K Oldroyd, David Tyson, Thomas N. “Monetising human life: slave valuations on US and British West Indian plantations.” Accounting History 9, no. 2 (July 1, 2004): 3562.Google Scholar
Fleischman, Richard K Oldroyd, David Tyson, Thomas N. “Plantation accounting and management practices in the US and the British West Indies at the end of their slavery eras.” The Economic History Review 64, no. 3 (2011): 765—97.Google Scholar
Lamoreaux, Naomi R Raff, Daniel M G Temin, Peter. “Beyond Markets and Hierarchies: Toward a New Synthesis of American Business History.” The American Historical Review 108, no. 2 (April 1, 2003): 404–33.Google Scholar
Metzer, Jacob. “Rational Management, Modern Business Practices, and Economies of Scale in the Ante-bellum Southern Plantations.” Explorations in Economic History 12, no. 2 (1975): 123–50.Google Scholar
Olmstead, Alan L Rhode, Paul W. “Biological Innovation and Productivity Growth in the Antebellum Cotton Economy.” The Journal of Economic History 68, no. 4 (2008): 1123–71.Google Scholar
Porter, Theodore M. “Quantification and the Accounting Ideal in Science.” Social Studies of Science 22, no. 4 (1992): 633–51.Google Scholar
van der Linden, Marcel. “Re-constructing the Origins of Modern Labor Management.” Labor History 51, no. 4 (2010): 509.Google Scholar
Williams, Robert W. “Thomas Affleck: Missionary to the Planter, the Farmer, and the Gardener.” Agricultural History 31, no. 3 (July 1, 1957).Google Scholar

Published Narratives and Reports

Brown, John. Slave Life in Georgia. Edited by Chamerovzow, Louis. London, UK: W.M. Watts, 1855.Google Scholar
Duncan, Peter. A Narrative of the Wesleyan Mission to Jamaica. London, UK: Partridge and Oakey, 1849.Google Scholar
Northup, Solomon. Twelve Years a Slave. Auburn, NY: Miller, Orton & Mulligan, 1855.Google Scholar
Thompson, Charles. Biography of a Slave. Dayton, OH: United Bretheren Publishing House, 1875.Google Scholar
Warner, Ashton. Negro Slavery Described by a Negro. London, UK: Samuel Maunder, 1831.Google Scholar
Watson, Henry. Narrative of Henry Watson, A Fugitive Slave. Boston: Bela Marsh, 1848.Google Scholar

Archival Sources

Thomas Affleck Papers, Louisiana and Lower Mississippi Valley Collections, LSU Libraries, Baton Rouge, Louisiana.Google Scholar
Capell Family Papers, Louisiana and Lower Mississippi Valley Collections, LSU Libraries, Baton Rouge, Louisiana.Google Scholar
The Barham Papers, Clarendon Depost, Bodleian Library, Oxford. MSS. Clar. dep. b. 33–8; c. 357–91, c. 428–32.Google Scholar
Walter Baker & Company Records, Baker Library Historical Collections, Harvard Business School, Boston.Google Scholar
Isaac G. Pierson and Bros. Collection, Baker Library Historical Collections, Harvard Business School, Boston.Google Scholar
Lyman Mills Collection, Baker Library Historical Collections, Harvard Business School, Boston.Google Scholar
Records of Antebellum Southern Plantations, Various Collections as Cited. Microfilm accessed at Lamont Library, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA.Google Scholar

Government Documents

Public Document 10. Public documents of Massachusetts. Boston: Secretary of the Commonwealth, 1871–1881.Google Scholar
Report of the Commissioner of Education. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1868–1890. Accessed at the Boston Public Library, Boston, MA.Google Scholar

Dissertations

McCarthy, Molly. “A Page, a Day: A History of the Daily Diary in America.” PhD dissertation, Boston College, 2004.Google Scholar
Roberts, Justin. “Sunup to Sundown: Plantation Management Strategies and Slave Work Routines in Barbados, Jamaica and Virginia, 1776–1810.” PhD dissertation, Johns Hopkins University, 2009.Google Scholar
Rood, Daniel B. “Plantation Technocrats: A History of Science and Technology in the Slaveholding Atlantic World, 1830–1860.” PhD dissertation, University of California, Irvine, 2010.Google Scholar
Rosenthal, Caitlin Clare. “From Memory to Mastery: Accounting for Control in America, 1750–1880.” PhD dissertation, Harvard University, 2012.Google Scholar