Justene Hill Edwards illuminates the inner workings of the slaves' economy and the strategies that enslaved people used to participate in the market. Focusing on South Carolina from the colonial period to the Civil War, she examines how the capitalist development of slavery influenced the economic lives of enslaved people. Unfree Markets deserves distinctions and superlatives for treating enslaved people as economic agents rather than participants in a slave economy segregated from larger processes of commercial life and capitalist development. Edwards brilliantly and convincingly argues that enslavers protected enslaved people's moneymaking ventures because they realized that the slaves' economy helped to safeguard their investments in slavery.