So far while writing this series on the new history of capitalism, I have been deliberately avoiding the topic which has often drawn the most attention—what we might call the Eric Williams Question: what is the historical relationship between slavery in the Americas and economic growth under capitalism? I have avoided writing about the recent work which addresses this question and the critical responses which have attacked that recent work in large part because I wanted to slip out of the tendency to see the field of NHOC as centered in that question and to judge the success of the Read more