Seth Rockman
Biographic Data
| ID | 1072685 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Seth Rockman |
| GIVEN NAMES | Seth |
| FAMILY NAME | Rockman |
| SIGNATURE | ROCKMAN S |
| AFFILIATIONS | John Brown University |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 18 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 49 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 17 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2001 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Coffee Nation
Plantation Goods
Seth Rockman, professor of history at Brown University, is the author or editor of three books, as well as numerous essays, almost all of which explore the intersections of slavery and capitalism and slavery and technology. These interests frame his most recent work. A finalist for the 2025 Pulitzer Prize in History and winner of the 2025 Philip Taft Labor History Book Award, Plantation Goods: A Material History of American Slavery follows northe…
Joining Forces
Reckoning with Slavery
Reckoning with Slavery has several simultaneous goals: to foreground numeracy in the early modern articulation of racial difference, to rethink Western modernity as a product of Black erasure, and to center the commodification of African and African-descended people in the history of capitalism. At its core, though, the book seeks to provide an intellectual and social history of enslaved women as clear-eyed analysts of the system of economic extr…
Science and/as work
This brief essay introduces a special issue dedicated to exploring two themes: "science and work" and "science as work." Following a brief overview of these two themes, it briefly describes the other contributions to the special issue
Historiographies of science and labor
This article offers suggestions for what a labor history of science might look like and what it might accomplish. It does so by first reviewing how historians of science have analyzed the history of both "science as labor" and "science and labor" since the 1930s. It then moves on to discuss recent historiographical developments in both the history of science and labor history that together provide an analytical frame for further research. The art…
Introduction
This introduction to the Focus section "Let's Get to Work: Bringing Labor History and the History of Science Together" considers the need for and implications of a labor history of science. What would the broad contours of such an approach be? And what new insights, into both the past and the present, could be revealed? The contributions to this Focus section show how a labor history of science broadens our understanding of the practice and pract…
The Kidnapping Club
A predatory urban police force with no regard for Black lives, an activist community that mobilizes publicity and mass protest to claim the equal protection of the law, a broader society fearful of disruptions to business and largely indifferent to questions of racial justice. The contemporary resonances are unmissable as Jonathan Daniel Wells recounts New York City’s rise to prominence. The city’s dependence on slave-grown cotton, Wells argues, …
Der alte und der neue Materialismus in der Geschichte der Sklaverei
Ever since W.E.B. du Bois conceptualized slaves’ self-emancipation during the U.S. Civil War as a "general strike," the language of labor history has informed scholarly understandings of slavery. While the analogy of the plantation to the factory has its obvious limitations, historians have understood slaves and slaveholders as engaged in recognizable struggles over the speed of work, the ownership of time and expertise, and the informal rights a…
Slavery's Capitalism
Slavery's Capitalism explores the role of slavery in the development of the U.S. economy during the first decades of the nineteenth century. It tells the history of slavery as a story of national, even global, economic importance and investigates the role of enslaved Americans in the building of the modern world.
What Makes the History of Capitalism Newsworthy
What Makes the History of Capitalism Newsworthy? Seth Rockman (bio) Keywords Capitalism, Economics, Early America, Slavery, Markets, History of capitalism Capitalism Takes Command: The Social Transformation of Nineteenth-Century America. Edited by Michael Zakim and Gary J. Kornblith. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012. Pp. viii + 358. Cloth, $97.00; paper $32.00.) Capitalism may be in crisis as an economic system, but it is thriving as a…
Slavery and Capitalism
Shaping historical memory means extracting lessons from the past. Those lessons frame the debate about the nature of the present. Just months after the inauguration of Woodrow Wilson, the attention of most of the nation focused on the events scheduled to commemorate the semi-centennial of what was by then increasingly viewed as “the turning point” of the Civil War. The reunion at Gettysburg in 1913 constituted the contemporary public exegesis of …
Scraping By
Scraping by
Enslaved mariners, white seamstresses, Irish dockhands, free black domestic servants, and native-born street sweepers. All navigated the low-end labor market in post-revolutionary Baltimore. Seth Rockman considers this diverse workforce, exploring how race, sex, nativity, and legal status determined the economic opportunities and vulnerabilities of working families in the early republic. In the era of Frederick Douglass, Baltimore's distinctive e…
Class and the History of Working People in the Early Republic
This essay explores the utility of class as a concept for writing the history of working people in the postrevolutionary United States. Historians have no difficulty identifying the impoverishment of female seamstresses, immigrant canal diggers, and enslaved agricultural laborers, but have few analytic categories for situating such diverse working people in an economic system that translated the physical labor of some into the wealth of others. C…
The Contours of Class in the Early Republic City
Research Article| December 01 2004 The Contours of Class in the Early Republic City Seth Rockman Seth Rockman Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Labor (2004) 1 (4): 91–108. https://doi.org/10.1215/15476715-1-4-91 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Twitter Permissions Search Site Citation Seth Rockman; The Contours of Class in the Early Republic City. Labor 1 December 2004; 1 (4): 91–108. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/15476715-…
Making Houses, Crafting Capitalism
Exploring the economic choices and daily work routines of house builders, Donna Rilling documents the vitality of small-producer capitalism in the early republic of the United States. Unlike the archetypal (if imaginary) artisan who pursued radical politics, resisted mechanized production, and decried competitive market relations, "men in the Philadelphia construction trades were aggressive and ingenious operators who plunged wholeheartedly into …
Captain Ahab Had a Wife
Lisa Norling. Captain Ahab Had a Wife: New England Women and the Whalefishery, 1720-1870. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 2000. 372 pp. ISBN 0-8078-2561-1, $45.00 cloth; ISBN 0-8078-4870-0, $24.95 paper
What Makes the History of Capitalism Newsworthy
What Makes the History of Capitalism Newsworthy? Seth Rockman (bio) Keywords Capitalism, Economics, Early America, Slavery, Markets, History of capitalism Capitalism Takes Command: The Social Transformation of Nineteenth-Century America. Edited by Michael Zakim and Gary J. Kornblith. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012. Pp. viii + 358. Cloth, $97.00; paper $32.00.) Capitalism may be in crisis as an economic system, but it is thriving as a…
Class and the History of Working People in the Early Republic
This essay explores the utility of class as a concept for writing the history of working people in the postrevolutionary United States. Historians have no difficulty identifying the impoverishment of female seamstresses, immigrant canal diggers, and enslaved agricultural laborers, but have few analytic categories for situating such diverse working people in an economic system that translated the physical labor of some into the wealth of others. C…
Introduction
This introduction to the Focus section "Let's Get to Work: Bringing Labor History and the History of Science Together" considers the need for and implications of a labor history of science. What would the broad contours of such an approach be? And what new insights, into both the past and the present, could be revealed? The contributions to this Focus section show how a labor history of science broadens our understanding of the practice and pract…
Der alte und der neue Materialismus in der Geschichte der Sklaverei
Ever since W.E.B. du Bois conceptualized slaves’ self-emancipation during the U.S. Civil War as a "general strike," the language of labor history has informed scholarly understandings of slavery. While the analogy of the plantation to the factory has its obvious limitations, historians have understood slaves and slaveholders as engaged in recognizable struggles over the speed of work, the ownership of time and expertise, and the informal rights a…
Science and/as work
This brief essay introduces a special issue dedicated to exploring two themes: "science and work" and "science as work." Following a brief overview of these two themes, it briefly describes the other contributions to the special issue
Historiographies of science and labor
This article offers suggestions for what a labor history of science might look like and what it might accomplish. It does so by first reviewing how historians of science have analyzed the history of both "science as labor" and "science and labor" since the 1930s. It then moves on to discuss recent historiographical developments in both the history of science and labor history that together provide an analytical frame for further research. The art…
Captain Ahab Had a Wife
Lisa Norling. Captain Ahab Had a Wife: New England Women and the Whalefishery, 1720-1870. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 2000. 372 pp. ISBN 0-8078-2561-1, $45.00 cloth; ISBN 0-8078-4870-0, $24.95 paper
Making Houses, Crafting Capitalism
Exploring the economic choices and daily work routines of house builders, Donna Rilling documents the vitality of small-producer capitalism in the early republic of the United States. Unlike the archetypal (if imaginary) artisan who pursued radical politics, resisted mechanized production, and decried competitive market relations, "men in the Philadelphia construction trades were aggressive and ingenious operators who plunged wholeheartedly into …
The Contours of Class in the Early Republic City
Research Article| December 01 2004 The Contours of Class in the Early Republic City Seth Rockman Seth Rockman Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Labor (2004) 1 (4): 91–108. https://doi.org/10.1215/15476715-1-4-91 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Twitter Permissions Search Site Citation Seth Rockman; The Contours of Class in the Early Republic City. Labor 1 December 2004; 1 (4): 91–108. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/15476715-…
Class and the History of Working People in the Early Republic
This essay explores the utility of class as a concept for writing the history of working people in the postrevolutionary United States. Historians have no difficulty identifying the impoverishment of female seamstresses, immigrant canal diggers, and enslaved agricultural laborers, but have few analytic categories for situating such diverse working people in an economic system that translated the physical labor of some into the wealth of others. C…
Scraping By
Scraping by
Enslaved mariners, white seamstresses, Irish dockhands, free black domestic servants, and native-born street sweepers. All navigated the low-end labor market in post-revolutionary Baltimore. Seth Rockman considers this diverse workforce, exploring how race, sex, nativity, and legal status determined the economic opportunities and vulnerabilities of working families in the early republic. In the era of Frederick Douglass, Baltimore's distinctive e…
Slavery and Capitalism
Shaping historical memory means extracting lessons from the past. Those lessons frame the debate about the nature of the present. Just months after the inauguration of Woodrow Wilson, the attention of most of the nation focused on the events scheduled to commemorate the semi-centennial of what was by then increasingly viewed as “the turning point” of the Civil War. The reunion at Gettysburg in 1913 constituted the contemporary public exegesis of …
What Makes the History of Capitalism Newsworthy
What Makes the History of Capitalism Newsworthy? Seth Rockman (bio) Keywords Capitalism, Economics, Early America, Slavery, Markets, History of capitalism Capitalism Takes Command: The Social Transformation of Nineteenth-Century America. Edited by Michael Zakim and Gary J. Kornblith. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012. Pp. viii + 358. Cloth, $97.00; paper $32.00.) Capitalism may be in crisis as an economic system, but it is thriving as a…
Slavery's Capitalism
Slavery's Capitalism explores the role of slavery in the development of the U.S. economy during the first decades of the nineteenth century. It tells the history of slavery as a story of national, even global, economic importance and investigates the role of enslaved Americans in the building of the modern world.
Der alte und der neue Materialismus in der Geschichte der Sklaverei
Ever since W.E.B. du Bois conceptualized slaves’ self-emancipation during the U.S. Civil War as a "general strike," the language of labor history has informed scholarly understandings of slavery. While the analogy of the plantation to the factory has its obvious limitations, historians have understood slaves and slaveholders as engaged in recognizable struggles over the speed of work, the ownership of time and expertise, and the informal rights a…
The Kidnapping Club
A predatory urban police force with no regard for Black lives, an activist community that mobilizes publicity and mass protest to claim the equal protection of the law, a broader society fearful of disruptions to business and largely indifferent to questions of racial justice. The contemporary resonances are unmissable as Jonathan Daniel Wells recounts New York City’s rise to prominence. The city’s dependence on slave-grown cotton, Wells argues, …
Reckoning with Slavery
Reckoning with Slavery has several simultaneous goals: to foreground numeracy in the early modern articulation of racial difference, to rethink Western modernity as a product of Black erasure, and to center the commodification of African and African-descended people in the history of capitalism. At its core, though, the book seeks to provide an intellectual and social history of enslaved women as clear-eyed analysts of the system of economic extr…
Science and/as work
This brief essay introduces a special issue dedicated to exploring two themes: "science and work" and "science as work." Following a brief overview of these two themes, it briefly describes the other contributions to the special issue
Historiographies of science and labor
This article offers suggestions for what a labor history of science might look like and what it might accomplish. It does so by first reviewing how historians of science have analyzed the history of both "science as labor" and "science and labor" since the 1930s. It then moves on to discuss recent historiographical developments in both the history of science and labor history that together provide an analytical frame for further research. The art…
Introduction
This introduction to the Focus section "Let's Get to Work: Bringing Labor History and the History of Science Together" considers the need for and implications of a labor history of science. What would the broad contours of such an approach be? And what new insights, into both the past and the present, could be revealed? The contributions to this Focus section show how a labor history of science broadens our understanding of the practice and pract…
Joining Forces
Coffee Nation
Plantation Goods
Seth Rockman, professor of history at Brown University, is the author or editor of three books, as well as numerous essays, almost all of which explore the intersections of slavery and capitalism and slavery and technology. These interests frame his most recent work. A finalist for the 2025 Pulitzer Prize in History and winner of the 2025 Philip Taft Labor History Book Award, Plantation Goods: A Material History of American Slavery follows northe…
Political science (9 works) · Sociology (8 works) · Capitalism (7 works) · Law (7 works) · History (6 works) · Philosophy (5 works) · Politics (5 works) · Epistemology (4 works) · Historical Economic and Social Studies (4 works) · Law (4 works)