Prompt: What was the historic transformation, or change over time, that the author is describing in the reading? According to the historian, why and how did this change take place? Did these changes take place gradually or rapidly, and how did they affect some of the people involved?
Taking a look at the reading from Rosenthal’s “Accounting for Slavery” the two chapters discuss the importance of record-keeping and its crucial role in our now modern economy. As Rosenthal explains “without this information, they risked losing their crop”(Rosenthal 16), the introduction of record-keeping proves to have paid its dividends at the time and continued to be used as a means of progressing the newly established system of economics even centuries later.
The technique of record-keeping was used by Attornies, Overseers, and Bookkeepers who were white workers who were very few and were clearly outnumbered in comparison to the people of color who were forced to work. Their job as workers were to keep track of the slaves who were on the plantations as well as keep track of who was in what section of the plantation. For the white workers, their role of record-keeping was crucial as this information was to be relayed to their supervisors, and them doing their job correctly allowed for possible promotions which meant economic mobility. The graphs that are provided gave a more in-depth look as to what the record-keeping was actually like and shows the complexity of how records were kept back in the 1700s-1800s. As Rosenthal continues she starts to show the formation of this slave society inside the plantation life as there is mention of enslaved managers who would watch over other slaves. This would be reserved for elders or ill-abled people who could not perform as well as others who were healthy. By providing slaves with other means of work, slaveowners maximized profits and would also have them record information that bookkeepers would not always be able to keep track of. There would be incentives that would be used to make sure that their work was the very best and prevent disobedience but this did not stop rebellion from ensuing. The reports done from the enslaved managers would be used to fill the reports for higher-ups and this becomes a cycle where there is a line of command formed that stems from the slaves and is able to make its way all the way up to the attornies which were second in command to the actual slaveowners.
A question that comes to mind during this reading stems from a section where Rosenthal mentions that since the slaveowners were not always present they would give consent to the attornies to take executive actions as they oversaw day-to-day life on the plantation fields. If this was the case then were there instances where the actions done by an attorney did not justify the result earned? This question stems from the thought that since attornies were given power from the hierarchy formed if there are instances where they over abused their power or if there was there a system that would keep them in check.
The chapter continues and we see a transformation of how this accountability for the workers adapts into a newer and more concise version than previously seen. There is a very brief mention that alludes to the slaves being punished for wanting to retaliate but when this did occur Rosenthal quotes Trevor Burnard to writing that it accredited the plantation system and that it was “the glue that held the plantation system together”(Rosenthal 39). off of slave brutality and refocusing into accountability the debut of pre-printed paper becomes a huge part of plantation life as well as industrialization that starts to form in the 1800s. Its use was not only limited to plantations but also was able to be used by industrialist firms. This use of pre-printed paper not only allowed for information to be presented concisely but it allowed for data to be sent with very little text proved to be very insightful. Rosenthal’s work so far goes in-depth into the plantation society and provides us information from an entirely new perspective as since this course is based on business history shows the correlation of how slavery and workers from the plantation helped promote the current economy we have today.
Apart from where you quote the title, the word “slavery” is conspicuously missing from your introductory paragraph. This prevents you from clearly identifying Rosenthal’s argument, which is that record-keeping on slave plantations is what paved the way for “our modern economy.” What is her intervention here–what is surprising or counter-intuitive about that argument?
The rest of your post is very good. The question you raise in paragraph 3 is an interesting one, but also raises additional questions about how successful or profitable these approaches were over time. Your point in paragraph 4 gets a little lost–if violence was “the glue that held the plantation together,” does Rosenthal’s emphasis on account-keeping detract from that assertation, or provide evidence for it?