Edward E. Baptist

Edward E. Baptist (born 1970) is an American academic and writer. He is Associate Professor of History at Cornell University, located in Ithaca, New York, where he specializes in the history of the 19th-century United States, and particularly the South. Thematically, he has been interested in the history of capitalism, and has also been interested in digital humanities methodologies. He is the author of numerous books.

Baptist was born in 1970 in Cambridge, Massachusetts, but grew up in Durham, North Carolina. He graduated from Georgetown University and in 1997 earned his doctorate from University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia.

Baptist is the Associate Professor of History at Cornell University. His areas of interest are 19th-century United States and especially the history of enslavement in America. Baptist is the author of many articles and books including The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism and the award-winning Creating an Old South.

In September 2014, Baptist's work came to prominence when The Economist magazine gave his book The Half Has Never Been Told an unfavorable review for characterizing slave owners negatively. The review generated widespread outrage against the publication and resulted in a rare withdrawal of the article and an apology from the magazine. Baptist penned a response in Politico magazine, in which he states:

Had the Economist actually engaged the book's arguments, the reviewer would have had to confront the scary fact that the unrestrained domination of market forces can sometimes amplify existing forms of oppression into something more horrific. No wonder the Economist abandoned its long-standing intellectual commitments in favor of sloppy old paternalism on Sept. 4, because if it hadn't, Mr./Ms. Anonymous might have had to admit that market fundamentalism doesn't always provide the best solution for every economic or social problem.

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