Description: This book studies how, from the last third of the 18th century to 1848, comparative costs of slave and free labor played a key role in the French debate over the abolition of slavery. The book thus offers an original view upon the connection between economic calculation and morality.
Review Quotes: "Calculation and Morality is a major contribution to the study of the French antislavery movement. A history of ideas, it concentrates on the ways abolitionists and their opponents used the tools of political economy. This focus illuminates one of the distinctive characteristics of France's national debate about colonial slavery." -- John Garrigus, Journal of Modern History
"An engrossing book that allows us to trace the economic element and its interaction with humanitarianism in the eighteenth and nineteenth century French colonial slavery question." -Oeconomia