You must read Walter Johnson on slavery, capitalism & American history. Here’s a new essay in Boston Review teased below by way of introduction. But read his books River of Dark Dreams and Soul by Soul. Change your life.
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Indeed, the history of capitalism makes no sense separate from the history of the slave trade and its aftermath. There was no such thing as capitalism without slavery: the history of Manchester never happened without the history of Mississippi. In Capitalism and Slavery (1944), Eric Williams gives a detailed account of the supersession of British colonial interests by manufacturing ones and the replacement of cotton with sugar as the foundation of capitalist development. Williams argues that Great Britain freed its slaves, but did not free itself from slavery. British capitalists simply outsourced the production of the raw material upon which they principally depended to the United States.
Source: To Remake the World: Slavery, Racial Capitalism, and Justice | Boston Review