What do you think?
Rate this book
Time on the Cross: The Economics of American Negro Slavery
First published in 1974, Fogel and Engerman's groundbreaking book reexamined the economic foundations of American slavery, marking "the start of a new period of slavery scholarship and some searching revisions of a national tradition" (C. Vann Woodward, New York Review of Books ).
In an Afterword added in 1989, the authors assess their findings in the light of recent scholarship and debate.
In an Afterword added in 1989, the authors assess their findings in the light of recent scholarship and debate.
336 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1974
11 people are currently reading
741 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 39 reviews
July 7, 2009
This academic study is a provocative, daring, and creative work that highlights how history can be elastic. Fogel won a Nobel Prize for his contribution as one of the chief architects of the “cliometric revolution” in historiography and in this book he applies statistics and economics to reexamine slavery and challenge conventional assumptions and perspectives. He also shows how “so-called observations or accounts” were actually polemics against or for certain positions that might be politically or ideologically loaded. The book concludes that “time on the cross” for blacks did not come to an end with emancipation, rather, slavery was an economic system that exploited racism, not an expression racism. The book is a wholesale debunking machine that stood culturally cherished beliefs about slavery on their head. What more could you ask from a book? (It should be noted though that the book has been harshly criticized.)
February 18, 2021
This was a hard slog of a book to get through. Not because of the subject matter, so much, as it was the fact that this is a book that, at it's core, is an economic treatise. And, like most of us with a warrior bent, matters of money are not exactly the thing that stirs the heart, or enobles the soul.
Despite that, I have to declare that this is a much needed book to read, no matter the difficulties, for two main reasons.
Firstly, this book busts the myths which are endemic when discussing antebellum Southern, or American in general, slavery. By doing a deep dive into data (everything from census records, to plantation record books, to tax records, etc... anything that was a primary source was exhaustively researched), and avoiding the pitfalls of emotionalism and sensationalism, the authors, no defenders of The South, found that so many elements of the story of slavery in The South was just plain not true, or highly exaggerated.
And they reveal this, sadly, hidden truth in a manner that doesn't in any way, shape, or form condone or apologize for slavery. However, it points out that slaves were, first and foremost, an economic investment by their owners, and therefore their owners saw to it that their investments were well taken care of.
Black slaves tended to eat better than poor whites, had better medical care, could earn income, had (albeit with a glass ceiling) avenues of social mobility, could learn trades and skilled jobs, and turn them into their own businesses, were encouraged to get married and have plenty of kids, fornication was frowned upon (The South has always been the Bible Belt, after all), and were taken care of for life. Granted, they were still property, but the current view of the life of the average slave is based, statistically, upon grossly exaggerating the outlier cases of abuse and cruelty (which did, indeed, occur).
In so doing, the authors point out that slavery was, indeed, an incredibly profitable economic institution, and that it rivaled free market capitalism in terms of overall profitability. (And perhaps, therein lies one of the chief motivations of what would become the War Between the States).
However, bear in mind, that this doesn't mean that slavery was a benign institution, nor that your average slave was overjoyed to be one. But the fact that there were no, major, violent revolts through to Reconstruction, and that many slaves, voluntarily, supported the Southern war effort in logistical and support roles, showcases that our view of slavery is more beholden to propaganda than scientifically discovered fact.
And there's the rub, the great irony that the authors point out, and the other point that makes this such a valuable, and necessary book to read.
It is the fault of the abolitionists, themselves largely racist (the vast majority were in support of recolonization back to Africa), who portrayed blacks as ignorant, lazy, indolent, unintelligent, lesser creatures worthy only of pity, that the last hundred and fifty plus years of race relations has been, too often, so poor in this country. The image of Blacks that the abolitionists (Northern and Southern, and yes, many Southern whites saw Blacks as economic competitors and wanted the institution done away with to remove their source of competition) painted did more damage to the cause of Black equality than anything else.
The image of the pitiable, barely sentient, victimized slave just doesn't wash with the facts. As this book clearly points out, Blacks were more than capable of being highly industrious, cleverly inventive, and of garnering their own sense of business acumen. After all, they benefited enough from their efforts at self improvement, which benefited the plantations as a whole, that they too were invested, in a way, in their own system of enslavement.
This book showcases that Blacks were not, as a people, victims. Many Black slaves more than proved that they were the equal of Whites when it came to artisanship and skilled trades, and in running small business. Many were themselves overseers and middle management, (while this book only mentions it in passing, there were, also, free Blacks who themselves owned plantations with slaves...), and, as Avery Craven points out in his "The Coming of the Civil War", they were so closely intertwined within White families that Southern culture can rightly be said to be a mix of Scots-Irish, Cavalier English, and African traits.
This is a very noteworthy book, on a highly controversial subject, but this one is necessary to read. Though it's a tough read, as it isn't exactly enjoyable reading, it's worthwhile reading.
Highly recommended.
Despite that, I have to declare that this is a much needed book to read, no matter the difficulties, for two main reasons.
Firstly, this book busts the myths which are endemic when discussing antebellum Southern, or American in general, slavery. By doing a deep dive into data (everything from census records, to plantation record books, to tax records, etc... anything that was a primary source was exhaustively researched), and avoiding the pitfalls of emotionalism and sensationalism, the authors, no defenders of The South, found that so many elements of the story of slavery in The South was just plain not true, or highly exaggerated.
And they reveal this, sadly, hidden truth in a manner that doesn't in any way, shape, or form condone or apologize for slavery. However, it points out that slaves were, first and foremost, an economic investment by their owners, and therefore their owners saw to it that their investments were well taken care of.
Black slaves tended to eat better than poor whites, had better medical care, could earn income, had (albeit with a glass ceiling) avenues of social mobility, could learn trades and skilled jobs, and turn them into their own businesses, were encouraged to get married and have plenty of kids, fornication was frowned upon (The South has always been the Bible Belt, after all), and were taken care of for life. Granted, they were still property, but the current view of the life of the average slave is based, statistically, upon grossly exaggerating the outlier cases of abuse and cruelty (which did, indeed, occur).
In so doing, the authors point out that slavery was, indeed, an incredibly profitable economic institution, and that it rivaled free market capitalism in terms of overall profitability. (And perhaps, therein lies one of the chief motivations of what would become the War Between the States).
However, bear in mind, that this doesn't mean that slavery was a benign institution, nor that your average slave was overjoyed to be one. But the fact that there were no, major, violent revolts through to Reconstruction, and that many slaves, voluntarily, supported the Southern war effort in logistical and support roles, showcases that our view of slavery is more beholden to propaganda than scientifically discovered fact.
And there's the rub, the great irony that the authors point out, and the other point that makes this such a valuable, and necessary book to read.
It is the fault of the abolitionists, themselves largely racist (the vast majority were in support of recolonization back to Africa), who portrayed blacks as ignorant, lazy, indolent, unintelligent, lesser creatures worthy only of pity, that the last hundred and fifty plus years of race relations has been, too often, so poor in this country. The image of Blacks that the abolitionists (Northern and Southern, and yes, many Southern whites saw Blacks as economic competitors and wanted the institution done away with to remove their source of competition) painted did more damage to the cause of Black equality than anything else.
The image of the pitiable, barely sentient, victimized slave just doesn't wash with the facts. As this book clearly points out, Blacks were more than capable of being highly industrious, cleverly inventive, and of garnering their own sense of business acumen. After all, they benefited enough from their efforts at self improvement, which benefited the plantations as a whole, that they too were invested, in a way, in their own system of enslavement.
This book showcases that Blacks were not, as a people, victims. Many Black slaves more than proved that they were the equal of Whites when it came to artisanship and skilled trades, and in running small business. Many were themselves overseers and middle management, (while this book only mentions it in passing, there were, also, free Blacks who themselves owned plantations with slaves...), and, as Avery Craven points out in his "The Coming of the Civil War", they were so closely intertwined within White families that Southern culture can rightly be said to be a mix of Scots-Irish, Cavalier English, and African traits.
This is a very noteworthy book, on a highly controversial subject, but this one is necessary to read. Though it's a tough read, as it isn't exactly enjoyable reading, it's worthwhile reading.
Highly recommended.
March 4, 2013
Leave history to the historians. Fogel, an economist, does a terrible job of interpreting history. This book is used in historical methods classes to show college students an example of "bad" history.
April 30, 2010
Interesting, but completely wrong. See Gutman: Slavery and the Numbers Game.
April 6, 2012
You will likely never catch me reading the same book twice, but only because it's never really a value-added for me the second time around; this would be the exception to that very general rule--I could read this little masterpiece of a diamond in the ruff again, and again, and again like a dead-end job! Robert William Fogel's interpretation, analysis, and delivery is pretty impressive regardless of personal opinion, judgment and belief with regard to the subject matter. I definitely cannot promise that he will inspire you to “believe”, but you will probably find his thoughts very compelling followed by a very odd tingling sensation that the common folks call a sense of the "enlightened". I learn something new, exciting and terrifying about the Economics of the North American Slave Trade and something else that seemingly has nothing to do with the book but appears in the form of an orgasmic epiphany that I, personally, refuse to call into question under any uncertain terms. But you can do whatever you want…
May 16, 2021
7/10
Very good with the facts and numbers. However vitiated by the tendentious antiracism of the last three chapters, the Boasianism doesn't seem to affect the analysis conducted earlier in the book, which is sui generis.
In the last chapters the authors state their purpose to be that of showing Negro accomplishment under adversity (when it's simultaneously shown that black quality of life and productivity fell sharply after emancipation) and to 'dissipate the embedded racist myth of laziness, sensuousness, and childlike lack of intellect', or, in a phrase the authors repeatedly use, 'the myth of black incompetence' (later IQ studies have borne out the truth of this): in short, to demolish the conclusions of the previous 250 pages with an appeal to stereotype threat. Recall, this was written before the left had to resort to ever more recondite and occult forms of racism to explain away the black intelligence and achievement gaps.
Tl;dr blacks thrived under slavery with higher real incomes, higher occupational achievement in skilled trades, longer life expectancy, etc. and at that time the gap between black and White/Asian achievement and crime was at its smallest. The difference? Management.
Although Aristotle deduced some were marked for rule from the womb, but do we conclude from this the time of the kangz has come?
Very good with the facts and numbers. However vitiated by the tendentious antiracism of the last three chapters, the Boasianism doesn't seem to affect the analysis conducted earlier in the book, which is sui generis.
In the last chapters the authors state their purpose to be that of showing Negro accomplishment under adversity (when it's simultaneously shown that black quality of life and productivity fell sharply after emancipation) and to 'dissipate the embedded racist myth of laziness, sensuousness, and childlike lack of intellect', or, in a phrase the authors repeatedly use, 'the myth of black incompetence' (later IQ studies have borne out the truth of this): in short, to demolish the conclusions of the previous 250 pages with an appeal to stereotype threat. Recall, this was written before the left had to resort to ever more recondite and occult forms of racism to explain away the black intelligence and achievement gaps.
Tl;dr blacks thrived under slavery with higher real incomes, higher occupational achievement in skilled trades, longer life expectancy, etc. and at that time the gap between black and White/Asian achievement and crime was at its smallest. The difference? Management.
Although Aristotle deduced some were marked for rule from the womb, but do we conclude from this the time of the kangz has come?
December 25, 2020
Economics without ethics.
October 14, 2018
Its of course easy to give the book 1 star for the amount of righteous falsification and criticism it has since its publication received, yet, especially with the knowledge of hindsight as the beginning of the famous controversy, it is a very interesting read.
February 23, 2010
Initially I struggled with this book. While some non-fiction, even when academic in scope, can still be compelling pleasure-reading, this book really is not. It is often dry--probably an inescapable result of the focus on statistics.
In addition, as it at times seems to negate some of the horrors of slavery, there is a natural revulsion to modern sensibilities. This should not be held against the book. Not only do the authors never defend slavery, but towards the end they treat the paradox, and make good points.
In addition to learning more about slavery and cliometrics, the greatest insight was probably an idea of the scope of trying to understand situations. As they covered the factors that led to certain misunderstandings and errors in the historical record, and some of the methods for getting a better understanding, you appreciate the labor, and how easy it can be to be wrong about something, and how important constant re-examination is. From when their research started to the time of a later edition, new errors were discovered, and findings revised, till the authors themselves would probably recommend that you read their followup work, Without Consent or Contract. It still does not mean that this work has no value.
In addition, as it at times seems to negate some of the horrors of slavery, there is a natural revulsion to modern sensibilities. This should not be held against the book. Not only do the authors never defend slavery, but towards the end they treat the paradox, and make good points.
In addition to learning more about slavery and cliometrics, the greatest insight was probably an idea of the scope of trying to understand situations. As they covered the factors that led to certain misunderstandings and errors in the historical record, and some of the methods for getting a better understanding, you appreciate the labor, and how easy it can be to be wrong about something, and how important constant re-examination is. From when their research started to the time of a later edition, new errors were discovered, and findings revised, till the authors themselves would probably recommend that you read their followup work, Without Consent or Contract. It still does not mean that this work has no value.
Read
February 26, 2011One of the book’s conclusions is that whipping was not used as much as previously thought, stating that there were only “an average of 0.7 whippings per hand per year.”
Mr. Fogel and Mr. Engermen seemed to have completely missed the point that it is physically impossible to be whipped 0.7 of a time.
January 25, 2018
Abominable! Read Gutman's Slavery and the numbers game to understand why this is an extremely shoddy work of history.
Want to read
April 17, 2013Yggdrasil says:
6. The Dispossessed Majority – Wilmot Robertson
* Time on the Cross: The Economics of American Slavery – Robert Fogel & Stanley Engerman
* Alien Nation — Peter Brimelow
* Oswald Mosley — Robert Skidelsky
* White Power — George Lincoln Rockwell
* My Awakening — David Duke
6. The Dispossessed Majority – Wilmot Robertson
* Time on the Cross: The Economics of American Slavery – Robert Fogel & Stanley Engerman
* Alien Nation — Peter Brimelow
* Oswald Mosley — Robert Skidelsky
* White Power — George Lincoln Rockwell
* My Awakening — David Duke
December 23, 2023
"Comrade, only slaves can save you".---Bertolt Brecht
Simon Legree's history lesson. Once upon a time TIME ON THE CROSS was the most controversial book in America and in some quarters the most reviled. Robert Fogel, a Nobel Prize-winning economist, and his partner in crime Engerman claimed to have not only upended everything we thought we knew bout American slavery but invented a new science, Cliometrics, or history through numbers, to illuminate that dark passage in American history, our national "Time on the Cross". Here are a few choice morsels from Chairman Fogel:
1. American slavery was quite profitable, right up until the time of the Civil War. Slavery was not dying out in the South, nor were slave owners tempted to switch to wage labor.
2. Paternalism, not savagery, was the mark of master-slave relations. Masters had a stake in the welfare of their subjects. American slavery had more in common with the Roman variety than with capitalist discipline.
3. The whipping of slaves was far less common than historians had supposed. Every month, a few slaves felt the lash. Yes, Fogel calculated punishment per human skin down on the farm.
See the bias here? Slavery is driven by what the masters wanted. The slavers dictated relations on the plantation. The slaves had no agency at all. This claim outraged the foremost American historians of slavery, Eugene Genovese (ROLL JORDAN, ROLL: THE WORLD THE SLAVES MADE) and Herbert Gutman (THE BLACK FAMILY IN SLAVERY AND FREEDOM), who accused Fogel and Engerman of cooking the books, i.e. slave plantation records, to fit their thesis of a benevolent master class. Gutman wrote a devastating answer to Fogel, SLAVERY AND THE NUMBERS GAME. The alleged science of Cliometrics was ripped apart by Jacques Barzun in CLIO AND THE DOCTORS, who showed numbers in history conceal more than they hide. Since slaves were whipped to maintain discipline the number of whippings is of no interest. Terrorizing the slaves is what counted. Rarely, a thesis in history is completely demolished. TIME ON THE CROSS is that instance. The Fogel line on slavery faded away and Cliometrics got laughed out of the history classroom.
Simon Legree's history lesson. Once upon a time TIME ON THE CROSS was the most controversial book in America and in some quarters the most reviled. Robert Fogel, a Nobel Prize-winning economist, and his partner in crime Engerman claimed to have not only upended everything we thought we knew bout American slavery but invented a new science, Cliometrics, or history through numbers, to illuminate that dark passage in American history, our national "Time on the Cross". Here are a few choice morsels from Chairman Fogel:
1. American slavery was quite profitable, right up until the time of the Civil War. Slavery was not dying out in the South, nor were slave owners tempted to switch to wage labor.
2. Paternalism, not savagery, was the mark of master-slave relations. Masters had a stake in the welfare of their subjects. American slavery had more in common with the Roman variety than with capitalist discipline.
3. The whipping of slaves was far less common than historians had supposed. Every month, a few slaves felt the lash. Yes, Fogel calculated punishment per human skin down on the farm.
See the bias here? Slavery is driven by what the masters wanted. The slavers dictated relations on the plantation. The slaves had no agency at all. This claim outraged the foremost American historians of slavery, Eugene Genovese (ROLL JORDAN, ROLL: THE WORLD THE SLAVES MADE) and Herbert Gutman (THE BLACK FAMILY IN SLAVERY AND FREEDOM), who accused Fogel and Engerman of cooking the books, i.e. slave plantation records, to fit their thesis of a benevolent master class. Gutman wrote a devastating answer to Fogel, SLAVERY AND THE NUMBERS GAME. The alleged science of Cliometrics was ripped apart by Jacques Barzun in CLIO AND THE DOCTORS, who showed numbers in history conceal more than they hide. Since slaves were whipped to maintain discipline the number of whippings is of no interest. Terrorizing the slaves is what counted. Rarely, a thesis in history is completely demolished. TIME ON THE CROSS is that instance. The Fogel line on slavery faded away and Cliometrics got laughed out of the history classroom.
December 4, 2025
The authors accomplished what they set out to do - provide a detailed analysis of the economics of the system of slavery as practiced in the South. It is to their credit that they challenged the prevailing narrative and backed up their challenges with facts. However, they still cling to the idea that there are no biological reasons for differences in behavior among races (specifically, blacks). This leaves them in the position of admitting there are behavioral differences, while also admitting that slavery has nothing to do with such differences. In fact, they admit that conditions were better for blacks under slavery than they were after emancipation. They attribute this to the Northern abolitionists, who like the civil rights warriors, actually made things worse for blacks.
March 18, 2018
Fascinating, but left me with more questions than answers. The authors present their thesis as representing a complete paradigm shift in understanding the economics of American slavery -- that's fine, but now their paradigm shift is nearly a half century in the past and I have no idea where the historiography has gone in the meantime. The picture they paint seems believable, but its implications seems prone to alienate everyone. Unfortunately I did not feel competent to fully breakdown their statistics.
It does leave me interested to see how historians may have approached this topic in the past decade or two.
It does leave me interested to see how historians may have approached this topic in the past decade or two.
April 20, 2025
Compelling argument against the existing narrative of slavery’s brutality and violence. However, much of the information is contested. A valuable read as part of the collection of the history of the history of slavery, but very much needs to be accommodated with more recent research.
July 13, 2025
The book is very well researched. However, I found the presentation to be exceptionally tedious. It's to be expected given what the authors were trying to accomplish. A book like this will appeal to academics.
October 11, 2018
A careful economic analysis, first of its kind, of slavery - and the lessons we can draw from that analysis. Upends much of conventional wisdom.
October 26, 2019
An essential read that should prompt deeper research and consideration by the reader.
May 5, 2022
Little whacky, not gonna lie. Maybe whackier is how many people read it when initially published.
June 4, 2022
A problematic retelling of the history of American slavery. Responsible for many grave misunderstandings on the topic, but not without its own revealing details.
November 13, 2022
It’s hard to know who to trust these days, but my sense is that this book attempts to tell the truth about slavery in the American South.
January 5, 2023
Dispels a lot of myths about slavery in America an essential read.
Read
April 27, 2024read for class - one of the most debated economics texts of the 20th century. hopefully will be able to reread with a more critical lens!
September 14, 2025
Keep in mind that it was written in the 70’s
March 10, 2021
Have to edit this review, this book is awful, lol. Read Slavery and the Number's Game by Gutman.
May 21, 2016
Time on the Cross: The Economics of American Negro Slavery, written by Robert W. Fogel and Stanley L. Engerman, was first published in 1974. The work Fogel and Engerman presented to their readers is based on quantitative techniques typically associated with computer analysis, otherwise referred to as “cliometrics.” The authors offered readers an extremely optimistic interpretation of well-motivated, competent slaves by non-specialists, the methodology, contents and conclusions the authors arrive at in this admittedly ‘sensational’ study were examined and generally rejected not only by ‘traditional’ historians but also economic scholars.
As a response to Time on the Cross, academic economist Paul A. David, a Professor Emeritus and Senior Fellow of Stanford University's Institute for Economic Policy Research, penned Reckoning with Slavery: A Critical Study in the Quantitative History of American Negro Slavery. David concluded “Time on the Cross is full of errors.” In the afterword to the second edition of Time on the Cross, published in 1990, Fogel and Engerman make not even a modicum of effort to revise that which was published in the original offering.
Extraordinarily, Fogel and Engerman make the outlandishly absurd claim that, when it came to ‘the public debate,’ there were apparently ‘no losers.’ In the period between the first and second editions of Time on the Cross being published, Fogel and Engerman apparently had the time to conduct further research which lead them to believe the ‘moral problem of slavery’ required a complete and thorough re-examination. The first publication of Time on the Cross, as University of Chicago sociology professor William J. Wilson observed, firmly placed the discussion over the peculiar institution of slavery in these United States front and centre.
As a response to Time on the Cross, academic economist Paul A. David, a Professor Emeritus and Senior Fellow of Stanford University's Institute for Economic Policy Research, penned Reckoning with Slavery: A Critical Study in the Quantitative History of American Negro Slavery. David concluded “Time on the Cross is full of errors.” In the afterword to the second edition of Time on the Cross, published in 1990, Fogel and Engerman make not even a modicum of effort to revise that which was published in the original offering.
Extraordinarily, Fogel and Engerman make the outlandishly absurd claim that, when it came to ‘the public debate,’ there were apparently ‘no losers.’ In the period between the first and second editions of Time on the Cross being published, Fogel and Engerman apparently had the time to conduct further research which lead them to believe the ‘moral problem of slavery’ required a complete and thorough re-examination. The first publication of Time on the Cross, as University of Chicago sociology professor William J. Wilson observed, firmly placed the discussion over the peculiar institution of slavery in these United States front and centre.
April 21, 2011
One of the most important and seminal books on slavery as an economic system, one which, the author states, was a going concern. It does not answer what is an unanswerable question - "Would slavery have collapsed upon itself?"; but looks at the peculiar institution as a viable economic system. Looked through this lens, one can understand slavery as a strange and unique labor-capital system. The investment in Labor/capital (the slave) had to be protected; more capital/labor (slaves) had to be acquired in the cheapest possible way (natural increase, purchase) as new productive lands were opened. The book is dispassionate - it is not an apologia for slavery by any means; but simply seeks to understand the system from a classical economics point of view, and therefore invaluable.
June 13, 2013
Robert Fogel just died and I realized that I had not included his book, which I avidly read in 1990. He won the Nobel in economics for this book (and other works). It is his analysis of slavery in the US as an economic institution. It combines economic analysis with historical analysis to shed much light on a hugely controversial topic. If you have not encountered this sort of "cliometric" analysis, you will find it interesting, challenging, and really different. He was no fan of slavery and looks at the institution clearly to show how it worked and made sense economically. He wrote a subsequent work - "Without Consent or Contract" to further develop this research. He was a truly great scholar and person and will be missed.
December 12, 2016
This econometric survey challenges many of the myths concerning slavery. One of the major myths is that slavery in the US was on the verge of economic collapse and that it would have ended as a viable system without the intervention of the Civil War. The author's analysis of economic data from the antebellum era dismiss that myth.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 39 reviews