How to understand the economic nature of southern plantations before the American Civil War? Historians have several identical or even completely different views.

The first view is that slavery in North America reappeared from the colonial rule of civilized countries. It is said that the new historical condition of slavery is that the products of capitalist colonialism in the restoration period depend on the capitalist world market, and the essence of commodity production system is combined with the slavery of American plantations caused by ancient slavery and the exploitation of modern capitalism. The barbarism and cruelty of ancient slavery reached its peak (Tang Taohua: Black Slavery in American History, Haimin Publishing House1980; Yang: The Nature of Slavery in the South before the American Civil War was published in Essays on American History (Sanlian Bookstore, 1980).

The second view holds that the primitive barbaric slavery of the American slave bourgeoisie under historical conditions has hindered the progress and development of capitalism. Bourgeois abolitionists refer to the slave economy. /kloc-in the 9th century, Ye Yuan's dying system is closely related to the capitalist commodity economy, and the southern part of the economic system still has development potential. (Jiang Xiangze: "The Record of Black Slaves Awaiting Heaven" is published in Mountain Newspaper No.41963; Wang Yi: The Development of Slavery in the American South and the Necessity of Civil War, in Essays on American History, Joint Publishing Company, 1983).

The third view holds that the plantation economy in the southern United States is rooted in the colonial expansion of British capitalism, and the nature of ancient slavery is closely related to economic capitalism. Reasons for commodity economy: (1) The plantation economy in the southern United States is influenced by the specific environment in North America, and the economic form of slave labor does not belong to the category of super-capitalism; (2) The economic output of southern plantations supplied the capitalist market, and the market demand was interrupted and expanded, that is, the land area was interrupted and the number of slaves increased; (2) Joint venture or sole proprietorship is the same as investment industry; (3) The southern plantation economy is not only an important part of the world capitalist economic system, but also an important link in the American local capitalist economic chain, especially an important raw material for the development of southern cotton and northern capitalist industries in China; (4) The slave labor force employed in southern plantations is closely related to plantation economy. At the beginning, the main labor and debt repayment contracts of plantation workers can last for a long time. When the period of indentured slavery was stable, he left the plantation owner, prompting the plantation owner to gradually give up indentured slavery and seek lifelong slave labor, that is, black slavery marked that the plantation owner turned from simple class exploitation to racial slavery. The nature of slave labor can belong to the capitalist nature that can be decided or changed by the nature of the southern plantation economic system (Cao: An analysis of the nature of American commodity slavery, World History, No.2,1984; Golden satellite: some questions about the nature of American Civil War, No.2 World History1992; He Shun: History of the King of American Cotton, Social Science Press, 1995)