‘Money does not stink’ – Accounting and slavery

Abstract

This article supplements the multidisciplinary effort sparked by the New York Times's 1619 Project to focus attention on institutions and practices that supported American slavery. Managerial and financial accounting practices support many types of endeavours. Accounting is usually done for managers, investors, and creditors. Accounting practices supported investment in, and management of slavery, a fundamentally immoral and destructive practice. Accounting served the interests of the enslavers, not the enslaved. Accounting practices helped investors in slave voyages and absentee plantation owners overcome agency problems, facilitating investment. Plantations used accounting to track enslaved people's productivity. Accounting terms and reports dehumanised enslaved men and women, classifying them as assets and as loan collateral. Accounting forms and statements treated slave ownership and the use of slave labour as routine. In these ways, accounting statements helped normalise and legitimise the practice of slavery and helped distance investors and lenders from its brutal reality.