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Download high-resolution cover Look inside

The Price for Their Pound of Flesh

The Value of the Enslaved, from Womb to Grave, in the Building of a Nation

Written by Daina Ramey Berry
Look inside
Hardcover
$27.95 US
Beacon Press
On sale Jan 24, 2017 | 280 Pages | 978-0-8070-4762-0
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  • History > Period History: U.S. > Colonial American History (1492 - 1776)
  • History > Race and Gender Studies > History of African-Americans
  • History > Topical History > History of Slavery
  • History > U.S. History > African American
  • Interdisciplinary Studies > Race and Ethnic Studies > African American History
  • About
  • Table of Contents
  • Author
Groundbreaking look at slaves as commodities through every phase of life, from birth to death and beyond, in early America.
Groundbreaking look at slaves as commodities through every phase of life, from birth to death and beyond, in early America

In life and in death, slaves were commodities, their monetary value assigned based on their age, gender, health, and the demands of the market. The Price for Their Pound of Flesh is the first book to explore the economic value of enslaved people through every phase of their lives—including preconception, infancy, childhood, adolescence, adulthood, the senior years, and death—in the early American domestic slave trade. Covering the full “life cycle,” historian Daina Ramey Berry shows the lengths to which enslavers would go to maximize profits and protect their investments. Illuminating “ghost values” or the prices placed on dead enslaved people, Berry explores the little-known domestic cadaver trade and traces the illicit sales of dead bodies to medical schools.

This book is the culmination of more than ten years of Berry’s exhaustive research on enslaved values, drawing on data unearthed from sources such as slave-trading records, insurance policies, cemetery records, and life insurance policies. Writing with sensitivity and depth, she resurrects the voices of the enslaved and provides a rare window into enslaved peoples’ experiences and thoughts, revealing how enslaved people recalled and responded to being appraised, bartered, and sold throughout the course of their lives. Reaching out from these pages, they compel the reader to bear witness to their stories, to see them as human beings, not merely commodities.

A profoundly humane look at an inhumane institution, The Price for Their Pound of Flesh will have a major impact how we think about slavery, reparations, capitalism, nineteenth-century medical education, and the value of life and death.

Winner of the 2018 Hamilton Book Award – from the University Coop (Austin, TX)

Winner of the 2018 Society for Historians of the Early American Republic Book Prize (SHEAR)

Winner of the 2018 Phillis Wheatley Literary Award, from the Sons and Daughters of the US Middle Passage

Finalist for the 2018 Frederick Douglass Book Prize from Yale University’s Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition
Author’s Note

Preface

List of Images

INTRODUCTION
The Value of Life and Death

CHAPTER 1
Preconception: Women and Future Increase

CHAPTER 2
Infancy and Childhood

CHAPTER 3
Adolescence, Young Adulthood, and Soul Values

CHAPTER 4
Midlife and Older Adulthood

CHAPTER 5
Elderly and Superannuated

CHAPTER 6
Postmortem: Death and Ghost Values

EPILOGUE
The Afterlives of Slavery

Acknowledgments

Appendix: A Timeline of Slavery, Medical History, and Black Bodies

Note on Sources: A History of People and Corpses

Notes

Index

About the Author
Daina Ramey Berry is the Oliver H. Radkey Regents Professor of History and associate dean of the Graduate School at the University of Texas at Austin. She is the author or co-editor of several previous books, including The Price for Their Pound of Flesh: The Value of the Enslaved, from Womb to Grave, in the Building of a Nation, winner of the 2017 SHEAR Book Award for Early American History. Connect with her at drdainarameyberry.com or @DainaRameyBerry on Twitter. Learn more about Daina Ramey Berry

About

Groundbreaking look at slaves as commodities through every phase of life, from birth to death and beyond, in early America.
Groundbreaking look at slaves as commodities through every phase of life, from birth to death and beyond, in early America

In life and in death, slaves were commodities, their monetary value assigned based on their age, gender, health, and the demands of the market. The Price for Their Pound of Flesh is the first book to explore the economic value of enslaved people through every phase of their lives—including preconception, infancy, childhood, adolescence, adulthood, the senior years, and death—in the early American domestic slave trade. Covering the full “life cycle,” historian Daina Ramey Berry shows the lengths to which enslavers would go to maximize profits and protect their investments. Illuminating “ghost values” or the prices placed on dead enslaved people, Berry explores the little-known domestic cadaver trade and traces the illicit sales of dead bodies to medical schools.

This book is the culmination of more than ten years of Berry’s exhaustive research on enslaved values, drawing on data unearthed from sources such as slave-trading records, insurance policies, cemetery records, and life insurance policies. Writing with sensitivity and depth, she resurrects the voices of the enslaved and provides a rare window into enslaved peoples’ experiences and thoughts, revealing how enslaved people recalled and responded to being appraised, bartered, and sold throughout the course of their lives. Reaching out from these pages, they compel the reader to bear witness to their stories, to see them as human beings, not merely commodities.

A profoundly humane look at an inhumane institution, The Price for Their Pound of Flesh will have a major impact how we think about slavery, reparations, capitalism, nineteenth-century medical education, and the value of life and death.

Winner of the 2018 Hamilton Book Award – from the University Coop (Austin, TX)

Winner of the 2018 Society for Historians of the Early American Republic Book Prize (SHEAR)

Winner of the 2018 Phillis Wheatley Literary Award, from the Sons and Daughters of the US Middle Passage

Finalist for the 2018 Frederick Douglass Book Prize from Yale University’s Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition

Table of Contents

Author’s Note

Preface

List of Images

INTRODUCTION
The Value of Life and Death

CHAPTER 1
Preconception: Women and Future Increase

CHAPTER 2
Infancy and Childhood

CHAPTER 3
Adolescence, Young Adulthood, and Soul Values

CHAPTER 4
Midlife and Older Adulthood

CHAPTER 5
Elderly and Superannuated

CHAPTER 6
Postmortem: Death and Ghost Values

EPILOGUE
The Afterlives of Slavery

Acknowledgments

Appendix: A Timeline of Slavery, Medical History, and Black Bodies

Note on Sources: A History of People and Corpses

Notes

Index

About the Author

Author

Daina Ramey Berry is the Oliver H. Radkey Regents Professor of History and associate dean of the Graduate School at the University of Texas at Austin. She is the author or co-editor of several previous books, including The Price for Their Pound of Flesh: The Value of the Enslaved, from Womb to Grave, in the Building of a Nation, winner of the 2017 SHEAR Book Award for Early American History. Connect with her at drdainarameyberry.com or @DainaRameyBerry on Twitter. Learn more about Daina Ramey Berry

Additional formats

  • The Price for Their Pound of Flesh
    The Price for Their Pound of Flesh
    The Value of the Enslaved, from Womb to Grave, in the Building of a Nation
    Daina Ramey Berry
    978-0-8070-6714-7
    $18.00 US
    Paperback
    Beacon Press
    Dec 26, 2017
  • The Price for Their Pound of Flesh
    The Price for Their Pound of Flesh
    The Value of the Enslaved, from Womb to Grave, in the Building of a Nation
    Daina Ramey Berry
    978-0-8070-4763-7
    $14.99 US
    Ebook
    Beacon Press
    Jan 24, 2017
  • The Price for Their Pound of Flesh
    The Price for Their Pound of Flesh
    The Value of the Enslaved, from Womb to Grave, in the Building of a Nation
    Daina Ramey Berry
    978-0-8070-6714-7
    $18.00 US
    Paperback
    Beacon Press
    Dec 26, 2017
  • The Price for Their Pound of Flesh
    The Price for Their Pound of Flesh
    The Value of the Enslaved, from Womb to Grave, in the Building of a Nation
    Daina Ramey Berry
    978-0-8070-4763-7
    $14.99 US
    Ebook
    Beacon Press
    Jan 24, 2017

Other books by this author

  • A Black Women's History of the United States
    A Black Women's History of the United States
    Daina Ramey Berry, Kali Nicole Gross
    978-0-8070-0199-8
    $16.00 US
    Paperback
    Beacon Press
    Mar 16, 2021
  • A Black Women's History of the United States
    A Black Women's History of the United States
    Daina Ramey Berry, Kali Nicole Gross
    978-0-8070-0199-8
    $16.00 US
    Paperback
    Beacon Press
    Mar 16, 2021
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