Blog post #4

Over the course of this semester, I learned a lot of new things about the history of American business, industry, and capitalism. The aspects of this history that were entirely new to me were topics about how enslaved people were managed on plantations. In previous classes that I took about American history, we were only taught about slaves being sold to plantation owners from Africa to work on large plantations. Nothing about how there was a whole system to manage these plantations. Furthermore, I didn’t know that slavery had connections with capitalism prior to taking this course. This is interesting because I knew that plantation owners preferred slave labor since they were long-lasting compared to indentured servants who would be free after their contract ends. However, I never went to think about the connection between the two and how it makes sense that plantation slavery is related to capitalism because the plantation owners force the slaves to work in harsh environments to generate a profit for themselves. 

I think the value of studying American history from a business or economic history perspective is so that we are able to evaluate the decisions made at the time. For example, the New Deal receives a lot of criticism from the historical revisionist. However, when we look at the time period which was during the great depression it makes sense that the New Deal’s legislation has been effective in helping the economy recover. Although, revisionists can come up with many other ways that the American economy could recover faster. None can be sure since it is only an idea. Furthermore, studying American history from a business or economic history perspective like studying any other type of history is to learn what was effective in the past and what can be applied to the present. Also, learn from what has failed in the past and why and what caused the idea to fail. Then see if there’s any way the idea could be fixed so that it can work.