Choice Review

The nine chapters offered here, which argue for a new approach to the issue of the developing global economy, originally appeared in various collections published in the 1980s and 1990s. The role of slavery in the historical foundation of the capitalist economy has been examined many times before. Tomich (Binghamton Univ.) is the first scholar to posit two different relations between them based on chronology. The book is divided into three discrete sections. The first, and the most turgid and theoretical, rejects all previous bases of economic analysis, the Marxian, neoclassical, world systems analysis and others, because, Tomich says, collecting empirical evidence to support any economic argument fails when the original assumptions are faulty. Instead of one relationship between capitalism and slavery, there were two. Part 2 focuses on sugar production in the French Caribbean as an example of slavery's role in the foundation of 19th-century capitalism. Part 3 focuses on Martinique in the mid to late 19th century to show capitalism's role in the formation of a second form, or, a new slavery. The author's method, format, and writing style require readers already well versed in development theory and the 20th-century debates about the relationship between slavery and the rise of capitalism. ^BSumming Up: Recommended. Graduate and research collections. R. T. Brown formerly, Westfield State College