Aoody，我理解了：只讲课文里的 “The economics of slavery（奴隶制的经济学）”，而且要扩展到能讲 20 分钟，补充船上的生活细节和法律如何塑造这套经济。下面是一份口语化、好读容易讲的完整演讲稿（5 人×约 4 分钟），并配了权威参考，你可以直接放进 PPT。

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总标题（PPT）

The Economics of Slavery: Money, Ships, Laws—and Human Lives

讲者顺序：Aoody → Kevin → Doit → Archer → Louis
每人约 4 分钟；每段都有“要点句”和可上屏的数据/事实。

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1) Aoody — Set the stage: a global business model（开场 3–4 分钟）

Hello friends. Today we focus on one core question:
How did slavery become a global money machine?
Not just morally wrong—but economically organized.

Big picture in two lines:

• European empires followed mercantilism: colonies sent raw materials; the metropole sold finished goods back. Slavery fit perfectly into this closed loop. (Cambridge University Press & Assessment )

• This became the triangular trade: Europe → Africa → the Americas → back to Europe. It wasn’t just a route; it was a business model. (Encyclopedia.com)

Scale—why this mattered: historians estimate ≈12.5 million Africans were forced onto ships; ≈10.7 million survived to the Americas. That’s the scale of the market we’re studying. (Gilder Lehrman Institute )

How a voyage made money—“tight pack vs. loose pack”:
Captains faced a cruel calculus. Tight packing crammed more people onboard, accepting higher deaths; loose packing carried fewer with lower mortality. Both aimed at profit at the auction block. The now‑famous Brookes diagram you see on the slide made these conditions visible and pushed Parliament to regulate shipboard numbers in 1788（Dolben’s Act）. (sites.miamioh.edu )

What life was like on the ship—because profit demanded it:

• Space & air: people were chained in holds with low headroom and foul air—dysentery and fevers were common; average Middle Passage mortality is often estimated around 13%（时空差异很大）. (Encyclopedia Britannica )

• Food & water: testimony describes rations like boiled grains or beans and water sometimes as little as a pint/day; when voyages ran long, rations were cut. (Encyclopedia Britannica )

• Forced “exercise” a.k.a. “dancing the slaves”—to keep bodies looking saleable and reduce disease risk. (thirteen.org)

• Suicide & resistance: crews stretched netting along the rails to stop people leaping overboard; still, some jumped rather than be sold. (Royal Museums Greenwich )

One sentence to remember:

The ship was a moving factory: inputs were human lives, cost control was rations and packing, quality control was forced “exercise,” and output was bodies sold for cash.
Now Kevin will show who financed this system and which laws made it possible.

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2) Kevin — Money, credit, insurance & the law（金融与法律 4 分钟）

Follow the money: risky voyages need insurance, credit, and ports. Insurers in London—famously Lloyd’s—underwrote slave voyages and have since publicly apologized for their role. That insurance spread risk and allowed more ships to sail. (Lloyds )

A chilling example of money logic: the Zong case (1781)—over 130 captives were deliberately drowned and the owners filed an insurance claim for “lost cargo.” It became an insurance lawsuit—showing how finance sat at the core of the trade.

American side—turning crops into cash:

• Southern planters worked with cotton factors（经纪人） in New Orleans and other ports to ship, insure, and borrow against next year’s crop. Interest and commissions turned factors into de‑facto bankers. (OUP Academic )

• Banks across the South accepted enslaved people as collateral. Historians show mortgages and even state‑backed bonds tied directly to enslaved bodies; this financialized slavery and drew in investors from New York, London, Amsterdam. (Yale Department of Economics )

Why laws mattered to economics:

• Fugitive Slave Acts (1793 & 1850) strengthened the legal power to seize and return runaways—even in free states. That reduced owners’ risk, helping protect asset value. (Encyclopedia Britannica )

• 1808 U.S. import ban ended legal importation of captives. It did not end slavery—it shifted the market to a huge domestic trade and raised prices for people sold into the Deep South. (National Archives )

• In Britain, laws evolved from regulating shipboard numbers（1788） to abolishing the slave trade（1807）; the Royal Navy’s West Africa Squadron then captured ≈1,600 slaving ships and freed ≈150,000 Africans, raising smugglers’ costs and risks. (Research Briefings )

Economics in one line:

Insurance made voyages possible, credit scaled plantations, and law lowered owners’ risks—together they turned human beings into collateral and cash flow.

Next, Doit explains why cotton dominated this economy.

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3) Doit — Why cotton ruled the numbers（棉花为何“称王” 4 分钟）

Two shocks made cotton explode:

1. Technology & biology: after 1793 (cotton gin), planters planted far more cotton. Meanwhile, historians find that per‑person cotton picking rates roughly quadrupled from 1801 to 1862, mainly due to new seed varieties diffusing across plantations. More output per person meant more profits—and, tragically, more demand for enslaved labor. (NBER )

2. Global demand: by 1860/61, cotton was ≈58–61% of all U.S. exports—that’s why Southerners bragged “Cotton is King.” (essentialcivilwarcurriculum.com)

Britain’s dependence tells the story: on the eve of the U.S. Civil War, Britain sourced about 80% of its raw cotton from the United States. When war and blockade came, Lancashire mills suffered the Cotton Famine—proof that American slave labor sat at the heart of global industry. (Encyclopedia Britannica )

Slide‑ready bullets（讲的时候扫屏即可）

• A trade bale was ~480–500 lbs—handy for thinking in “bales = export dollars.” (Internet Archive )

• Picking seasons often required multiple passes through the fields—daylight‑to‑dark work. (mlpp.pressbooks.pub )

Key sentence:

Cotton didn’t just grow on Southern soil; it grew inside a global system of mills, merchants, ships, and credit.

Archer will now show how, inside that system, people were treated as capital.

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4) Archer — People as capital: prices, mortgages, and the Second Middle Passage（4 分钟）

Asset values: By 1860, the market value of enslaved people in the U.S. stood at around $3 billion—one of the largest asset classes in the nation. Many reputable sources note this exceeded investments in factories, railroads, and banks combined. (EH.net)

How finance locked it in:

• Enslaved people were mortgaged like property; banks took them as collateral and foreclosed when loans failed. Recent scholarship explains how state‑backed banks in places like Louisiana bundled such debt and sold it to global investors. (University of Chicago Press )

• Price logic 101（可口播）：in any market, price ≈ the present value of expected future profits. For slaveholders, law and force aimed to guarantee those future profits—that’s why stronger fugitive laws or limited supply after 1808 could push prices up. (Econlib )

The “Second Middle Passage”: after 1808, over ~1,000,000 people were forced‑migrated inside the U.S. from the Upper South to Deep South markets like New Orleans—because cotton profits were there. The domestic trade replaced the Atlantic one. (jsdp.enslaved.org)

One sentence to remember:

In spreadsheets and ledgers, human beings became “capital stocks”—priced, mortgaged, insured, and moved to wherever cotton profits were highest.

Finally, Louis will show what broke this model.

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5) Louis — Shocks, laws, and the end of the model（收束 3–4 分钟）

Two shocks collapsed the cashflows:

1. War & blockade: The Union blockade and Confederate “cotton diplomacy” cut exports; Britain searched for cotton in India and Egypt, and Lancashire entered the Cotton Famine (1861–65)—a global crisis revealing how fragile “King Cotton” really was. (Liberty Street Economics )

2. Policy change: The Emancipation Proclamation (1863) and the Thirteenth Amendment (1865) abolished slavery—legally zeroing out that multibillion‑dollar asset class. The economics couldn’t survive the end of property in people. (JSTOR )

Final takeaway:

Slavery’s economics were built on mercantilist trade, shipboard cost control, insurance & credit, and laws that protected “property.” When the law changed and the supply chain snapped, the system fell—even before the moral case finally prevailed.

Thank you.

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可直接上屏的“Key Data”一页

• Triangular trade was the model linking Europe–Africa–Americas; it scaled to 12.5M embarked / 10.7M landed. (Encyclopedia.com)

• Middle Passage conditions: cramped holds, disease; ~13% mortality on average; forced “dancing” as “exercise”; suicide risk so high ships used netting. (Encyclopedia Britannica )

• Cotton dominance: ≈58–61% of U.S. exports by 1860/61; Britain sourced ≈80% of raw cotton from the U.S. before the war. (essentialcivilwarcurriculum.com)

• Finance: insurers like Lloyd’s underwrote voyages; U.S. banks mortgaged enslaved people; Louisiana banks sold bonds backed by slave collateral. (Lloyds )

• Law & economics: Fugitive Slave Acts reduced owners’ risk; 1808 U.S. import ban shifted to domestic trade and raised prices; Britain abolished the trade (1807) and the West Africa Squadron seized ≈1,600 ships. (Encyclopedia Britannica )

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每位讲者的提词（更口语、更慢节奏）

Aoody（开场）

• “We’re telling one story: how money made slavery grow.”

• “Think of the ship as a moving factory—inputs were lives, cost control was packing and rations, output was sale price.”

• 指图：“这张是 Brookes 船的剖面图，1788 年英国开始限载，就是因为它。 ” (Wikipedia )

Kevin（金融+法律）

• “No insurance, no voyages. That’s why Lloyd’s matters.” (Lloyds )

• “美国这边，人就是抵押品。你欠债，银行就拍卖人。” (Yale Department of Economics )

• “法律把风险降到最低：1793/1850 逃奴法、1808 禁运、英国1807 取缔贸易+海军巡逻。” (Encyclopedia Britannica )

Doit（生产率+出口）

• “一手是轧棉机，一手是新品种：每人采棉效率 4 倍。” (NBER )

• “1860 年棉花≈六成出口，英国 80% 棉来自美国——这就是‘棉花称王’。” (essentialcivilwarcurriculum.com)

Archer（人即资本）

• “1860 年被奴役人口总值≈$3B，是全国最大的资产之一。” (EH.net)

• “第二次中途航程：~100 万人被强制转移到棉区。” (jsdp.enslaved.org)

Louis（终局）

• “封锁+棉荒让‘棉花称王’露出真面目。” (Liberty Street Economics )

• “1863 解放宣言 → 1865 第十三修正案：法律直接把这门生意清零。” (JSTOR )

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参考（放 PPT 尾页即可，已尽量精选）

• Encyclopaedia Britannica — Middle Passage；Fugitive Slave Acts. (Encyclopedia Britannica )

• National Archives (U.S.) — Slave Trade 教学页；Brookes 船图（原件）。 (National Archives )

• Royal Museums Greenwich — West Africa Squadron（1,600 ships / 150,000 people）。 (Royal Museums Greenwich )

• Lloyd’s (official site) — The transatlantic slave trade（机构研究与致歉声明）。 (Lloyds )

• EH.Net — The Economics of the Civil War（1860 奴隶总值≈$3B）。 (EH.net)

• NBER/JEH — Olmstead & Rhode：采棉效率四倍提升。 (NBER )

• Lowcountry Digital History Initiative — British dependence on U.S. cotton. (Encyclopedia Britannica )

• New York Fed blog — Cotton Famine & cotton diplomacy. (Liberty Street Economics )

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小贴士（让 20′ 更稳）

• 每段首句=结论，后面用 2–3 个事实支撑。

• 图片建议：① Brookes 船剖面；② Zong 事件（Turner《The Slave Ship》）一张做“金融与保险的反人性”侧栏；③ 一页“Key Data”。

• Q&A 备答：若被问“是不是只有南方赚钱？”——回答：北方船务、保险、纺织和英国 Lancashire 同样深嵌在链条中（举 Lloyd’s、新英格兰纺织、利物浦港作为例）。 (Lloyds )

如果你想，我也可以把这份讲稿拆成 10 张 PPT 的逐页要点或做成中文讲义版（中英文对照），你们现场照着读就行。