In some ways the conditions of slavery permitted a more scientific approach than the factories did. These documents show that plantations used highly sophisticated accounting practices more consistently than many contemporary northern factories, which are often considered the birthplace of modern management. The mythology is that on plantations, management was crude and just amounted to driving enslaved people harder and harder. Rosenthal: I was surprised by what we uncovered in these account books. The challenge: Did historians get the genesis of management wrong? Professor Rosenthal, defend your research. After comparing their practices with those described in the account books of northern factories, Rosenthal concluded that many plantations took a more scientific approach to management than the factories did. She found that their owners employed advanced accounting and management tools, including depreciation and standardized efficiency metrics, to manage their land and their slaves. and West Indian plantations that operated from 1750 to 1860. The research: Caitlin Rosenthal pored over hundreds of account books from U.S. The finding: Slaveholding plantations of the 19th century used scientific management techniques-and some applied them more extensively than the factories thought to be their originators.
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