David Levy and Sandra Peart mean to revise the history of nineteenth-century British political economy. And more. In their latest, fascinating installment, The Vanity of the Philosopher, Peart and Levy argue that the transition from classical to post-classical economics is best understood as a sea change in the way political economists regarded human nature. What happened? Well, in the beginnin...

Background This study aims to characterize the role of county-specific legacy of slavery in patterning temporal (i.e., 1968-2014), and geographic (i.e., Southern counties) declines in heart disease mortality. In this context, the U.S. has witnessed dramatic declines in heart disease mortality since the 1960's, which have benefitted place and race groups unevenly, with slower declines in the Sou...

The economic interpretations of the slave economies of the New World, a s well a s those social interpretations which adopt the neoclassical economic model but leave the economics out, assume everything they must prove. By retreating from the political economy from which their own methods derive, they ignore the extent to which the economic process permeates the society. They ignore, that is, t...

Two different types of chattel slavery, those permitted by the Christian and Islamic religions, were introduced into Africa but only the Christian slave trade to the Americas has been studied by archaeologists. The much longer duration (over 1000 years) of the Islamic slave trade to Asia and of the Dar el Islam in North and East Africa is at present known only from literary and eyewitness accou...