African-American Slavery and the Cliometric Revolution

This chapter explores the significant contributions to the history of African-American slavery made by the application of the tools of cliometrics. As used here “cliometrics” is defined as a method of scientific analysis marked by the explicit use of economic theory and quantitative methods. American slavery of the late antebellum period (1840–1860) was one of the earliest topics that cliometricians focused on and, arguably, the topic upon which they made the largest impact.