Premium Episode 79 - Plantation Accounting in Jamaica

Programmed to Chill

[originally published on Patreon Dec 9, 2023]

Having laid out various accounting concepts, I now introduce their application in a horrible setting: plantation accounting in Jamaica. To do this, I rely on a close reading of Accounting for Slavery: Masters and Management by Caitlin Rosenthal. Her work simply demolishes the traditional business history about the development of these concepts. As it turns out, slave plantations actually led the global economy in new developments of field and factory regarding management styles, industrialization, organizational structure, accounting methods, and a number of other things.

I discuss the nature of the sugar trade, questions of efficiency, the weaponization of data, the question of absentee ownership, and the nature of quantification itself.

episode art by Robert Voyvodich @r.voy__

Songs:

My Queen is Ada Eastman by Sons of Kemet

Great Britain by Scorzayzee