Edward E. Baptist  

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Edward E. Baptist (born 1970) is an American academic and writer. He is a professor of history at Cornell University, located in Ithaca, New York, where he specializes in the history of the 19th-century United States, particularly the South. Thematically, he has been interested in the history of capitalism and has also been interested in digital humanities methodologies. He is the author of numerous books.

Early life and education

Baptist was born in 1970 in Cambridge, Massachusetts, but he grew up in Durham, North Carolina.

Career

Baptist is a professor of history at Cornell University. His areas of interest are 19th-century United States and especially the history of enslavement in America. Baptist is the author of many articles and books including The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism and the award-winning Creating an Old South.

In September 2014, Baptist's work came to prominence when The Economist magazine gave his book The Half Has Never Been Told an unfavorable review for characterizing slave owners negatively. The review generated widespread outrage against the publication and resulted in a rare withdrawal of the article and an apology from the magazine.

Had the Economist actually engaged the book's arguments, the reviewer would have had to confront the scary fact that the unrestrained domination of market forces can sometimes amplify existing forms of oppression into something more horrific. No wonder the Economist abandoned its long-standing intellectual commitments in favor of sloppy old paternalism on Sept. 4, because if it hadn't, Mr./Ms. Anonymous might have had to admit that market fundamentalism doesn't always provide the best solution for every economic or social problem.

The Half Has Never Been Told received mixed reviews from academics. A number of historians, including Eric Foner of Columbia University and Daina Ramey Berry of the University of Texas at Austin, have praised the book.

A 2020 study in the Economic History Review rejected Baptist's thesis that slavery was necessary for American economic development.

In 2017, Baptist was awarded a prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship for a new project on the history of the policing of African Americans from Jamestown to Ferguson.

Personal life

Baptist lives in Ithaca, New York.

Bibliography

• (2002). Creating an Old South: Middle Florida's Plantation Frontier before the Civil War. University of North Carolina Press. Template:ISBN.
• (2006). New Studies in the History of American Slavery. University of Georgia Press. Template:ISBN
• (2014). American Capitalism: A Reader. Louis Hyman and Edward E. Baptist. Simon & Schuster.
• (2014). The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism. Basic Books. Template:ISBN

See also

• List of Cornell University people
• List of Georgetown University alumni
• List of historians
• List of people from North Carolina
• List of University of Pennsylvania people