When Labor Was Capital: The Slave-Breeding Industry looks at how US slavery differed from the other slaveries of the hemisphere in having a domestically supplied slave trade, with Virginia, “the mother of slavery,” as the largest supplier of native-born human beings for market. Ned Sublette, author of The World That Made New Orleans and the co-author (with Constance Sublette) of the forthcoming The American Slave Coast: A History of the Slave-Breeding Industry (Chicago Review Press, October 2015), will talk about how labor was capital in the making of the United States.

Ned Sublette is the author of The Year Before the Flood (Lawrence Hill Books, 2009); The World That Made New Orleans: From Spanish Silver to Congo Square (Lawrence Hill Books 2008); and Cuba and Its Music: From the First Drums to the Mambo (Chicago Review Press, 2004).

He is a frequent speaker at universities, museums, conferences, and festivals. Known also as a singer-songwriter, in the 1990s he co-founded the record label Qbadisc, which pioneered the marketing of contemporary Cuban music in the United States in the early 90s. He has produced or co-produced many albums and over 150 episodes of the public radio program Afropop Worldwide. He has received several fellowships and awards, including the Patrick Henry Writing Fellowship at the C.V. Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience in Chestertown, MD.