Slavery dates back to the dawn of civilization.




Chattel slavery involves the ownership by one person of another. This entry focusses on the operation of that labor system in the United States. Although chattel slavery dates back to the dawn of civilization, in the area that became the United States it emerged after the importation of Africans to the Virginia colony in 1619. Prior to the American Revolution, all British colonies in the New World legally or informally sanctioned the practice. Nearly every colony counted enslaved Africans among its population. Only during and after the Revolution did the northern states abolish the institution or begin to implement gradual emancipation. But slavery was more economically entrenched in the southern states and became more so over time. By the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861, slaves constituted one-third of the total slave-state population of 12.3 million.

Slavery has captured the attention of economists since at least the eighteenth century. 

Two basic questions have remained intertwined throughout the history of economic thought regarding this ancient institution. 
  • First, was slavery profitable?
  • And second, was slavery efficient?
  •  Was it profitable to individual slaveholders, in the sense of offering a reasonable prospect of monetary return (or some other material reward) comparable to what they could earn from other enterprises? 

Efficiency refers to overall economic gains. 

  • Did the exploitation of slave labor allocate and use resources in ways that fostered aggregate wealth and welfare, regardless of how unfairly it distributed wealth?
  • Did it produce goods and services as abundant and valuable as alternative labor arrangements could have? 

Often economists and historians have reached identical answers to both questions, concluding that either slavery was both unprofitable and inefficient or both profitable and efficient.

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