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The Heights of American Slaves: New Evidence on Slave Nutrition and Health

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 January 2016

Robert A. Margo  and
Richard H. Steckel
Robert A. Margo
Affiliation:
University of Pennsylvania
Richard H. Steckel
Affiliation:
Ohio State University
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Extract

In recent years the nutritional adequacy of the slave diet has received increasing attention from historians. Scholars have analyzed a wide array of sources such as the manuscript censuses of agriculture and population, the ex-slave narratives, diaries, plantation account books, and agricultural and medical journals to shed new light on the quantities, varieties, and nutritional content of foods consumed by slaves (Fogel and Engerman, 1974; Owens, 1976; Sutch, 1975; Kiple and Kiple, 1977; Savitt, 1978; Crawford, 1980; Kahn, 1983). While these studies have yielded considerable information on the average quality of the slave diet in the American South or for slaves in particular localities, relatively little systematic evidence has been available to date on how the level of nutrition varied among different groups in the slave population, and over time.

Type
Research Article
Information
Social Science History , Volume 6 , Issue 4 , Fall 1982 , pp. 516 - 538
Copyright
Copyright © Social Science History Association 1982 

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Footnotes

We would like to thank colleagues in the NBER Nutrition Project as well as A. T. Steegman, Jr. and James Henretta for useful comments on earlier drafts, and Henry Otto for research assistance. An earlier version of this article was presented at the 1979 Social Science History Association meetings in Boston.

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