Modern scholarship on the relationship between British capitalism and Caribbean slavery has been profoundly influenced by Eric Williams’s 1944 classic, Capitalism and Slavery. The present volume represents the proceedings of a conference on Caribbean Slavery and British Capitalism convened in his honour in 1984, and includes essays on Dr Williams’s scholarly work and influence. These essays, by thirteen scholars from the United States, England, Africa, Canada and the Caribbean, explore the relationship between Great Britain and her plantation slave colonies in the Caribbean.

Rufus Kinsley was a farmer from rural Vermont who became an officer in one of the nation's first and most famous black regiments during the Civil War. Diary of a Christian Soldier offers a meticulous reconstruction of Kinsley's life and an annotated transcription of his hitherto unpublished wartime diary, which sheds light on a long neglected theater of the war-the battle for the bayou country of southwestern Louisiana-and illuminates the workaday routines of black and white soldiers stationed behind Union lines. Kinsley's diary reveals that he was a dedicated evangelical abolitionist soldier who believed that the war and its consequences were divine retribution for the sin of slavery and that he believed that the Civil War was not actually about saving the Union, but about freeing slaves. David Rankin's biography places Kinsley's Civil War experience in the context of his life and times. David C. Rankin, who has received fellowships from the American Council of Learned Societies and the Charles Warren Center at Harvard University, has written extensively on slavery, the South, the Civil War, and Reconstruction. His articles have appeared in the Journal of Southern History, Perspectives in American History, and other publications; he is also the editor of My Passage at the New Orleans "Tribune": A Memoir of the Civil War Era (Louisiana State University, 2001).

This book provides a series of pioneering studies, by experts in the field, on resistance to forms of bondage in Africa, Asia and the Indian Ocean world. It analyses the causes, duration and structure of resistance, from go-slows to flight, and theft to sabotage. It also examines the reaction to resistance by the propertied classes and assesses to what degree, if any, resistance was effective in alleviating the nature of bondage. The case studies, drawn from a wide spectrum of geographical areas and historical eras, underscore similarities and contrasts across the Africa-Asian regions. Summaries of these and a comparison with the much more publicized Atlantic system make this volume essential reading for scholars and students across a broad spectrum of disciplines and area studies.
This book was previously published as a special issue of the journal Slavery and Abolition.

'A powerful treatise' - Amelia Gentleman, Guardian In 2019, over 10,000 possible victims of slavery were found in the UK. From men working in Sports Direct warehouses for barely any pay, to teenaged Vietnamese girls trafficked into small town nail bars, we're told that modern slavery is all around us, operating in plain sight. But is this really slavery, and is it even a new phenomenon? Why has the British Conservative Party called it 'one of the great human rights issues of our time', when they usually ignore the exploitation of those at the bottom of the economic pile? The Truth About Modern Slavery reveals how modern slavery has been created as a political tool by those in power. It shows how anti-slavery action acts as a moral cloak, hiding the harms of the 'hostile environment' towards migrants, legitimising big brands' exploitation of the poorest workers and oppressing sex workers. Blaming the media's complicity, rich philanthropists' opportunism and our collective failure to realise the lies we're being told, The Truth About Modern Slavery provides a vital challenge to conventional narratives on modern slavery.

Slave soldiers are a distinctively Muslim phenomenon. Though virtually unknown in the non-Muslim world, they have been a constant and pervasive feature of the Muslim Middle East from the ninth century AD into modern times. Why did Muslim rulers choose to place military and political power in the hands of imported slaves? It is this question which Dr Crone seeks to answer. Concentrating on the period from the rise of the Umayyads to the dissolution of the ‘Abbasid empire (roughly AD 650–850), she documents the consequences of the fusion between religion and politics in Islam, which she sees as an essential forging characteristic of the Muslim social structure and state. Primarily addressed to specialists and advanced students of Arabic and Islamic history, the book will also appeal to comparative historians and social anthropologists.

In The Lamplighter award-winning poet and Scottish Makar Jackie Kay takes us on a journey into the dark heart of Britain’s legacy in the slave trade.

First produced as a play, on the page it reads as a profound and tragic multi-layered poem. We watch as four women and one man tell the story of their lives through slavery, from the fort, to the slave ship, through the middle passage, following life on the plantations, charting the growth of the British city and the industrial revolution. Constance has witnessed the sale of her own child; Mary has been beaten to an inch of her life; Black Harriot has been forced to sell her body; and our lead, the Lamplighter, was sold twice into slavery from the ports in Bristol. Their different voices sing together in a rousing chorus that speaks to the experiences of all those brutalised by slavery, and lifts in the end to a soaring and powerful conclusion.

Stirring, impassioned and deeply affecting, The Lamplighter remains as essential today as the day it was first performed. This is an essential work by one of our most beloved writers.

Wilma Dunaway breaks new ground by focusing on slave experiences on small plantations in the Upper South. She argues that the region was not buffered from the political, economic, and social impacts of enslavement simply because it was characterized by low black population density and small slaveholdings. Dunaway pinpoints several indicators that distinguished Mountain South enslavement from the Lower South, by drawing on a massive statistical data base derived from antebellum census manuscripts and county tax records of 215 counties in nine states, slaveholder manuscripts, and regional slave narratives.

Wilma Dunaway breaks new ground by focusing on slave experiences on small plantations in the Upper South. She argues that the region was not buffered from the political, economic, and social impacts of enslavement simply because it was characterized by low black population density and small slaveholdings. Dunaway pinpoints several indicators that distinguished Mountain South enslavement from the Lower South, by drawing on a massive statistical data base derived from antebellum census manuscripts and county tax records of 215 counties in nine states, slaveholder manuscripts, and regional slave narratives.

Wilma Dunaway contends that studies of the U.S. slave family are flawed by the neglect of small plantations and export zones and the exaggeration of slave agency. Using data on population trends and slave narratives, Dunaway identifies several profit-maximizing strategies that owners implemented to disrupt and endanger African-American families. These effective strategies include forced labor migrations, structural interference in marriages and childcare, sexual exploitation of women, shortfalls in provision of basic survival needs, and ecological risks. This book is unique in its examination of new threats to family persistence that emerged during the Civil War and Reconstruction.

A narrative biography of American abolitionist Harriet Tubman, who escaped slavery and led others to freedom as a conductor on the Underground Railroad.

Slavery was in many ways the fundamental institution in colonial Cuba, whose economy was based on the export of sugar from the slave-worked plantations. This volume presents a quantitative study of Cuban slavery from the late eighteenth century until 1880, the year slavery was formally abolished on the island. The core of this study is an examination of the yearly movement of slave prices and changes in the demographic characteristics of the slave market. Based on data from the notarial protocol records of the Archivo Nacional de Cuba, this book establishes precise price trends for slaves by age, sex, nationality, and occupation, and considers a number of other variables including the prices of coartados (slaves who had begun the process of buying their freedom) and the patterns of emancipation. Incorporating over 30,000 slave transactions from three separate locations in Cuba - Havana, Santiago, and Cienfuegos - this work comprises the largest extant database on any slave market in the Americas.

The Atlantic slave trade brought to Cuba the African slaves who created the dramatic transformation of the island from a relative backwater of Spain’s colonial empire in the mid-eighteenth century to the world's richest plantation colony one hundred years later. Britain played a vital role in this transformation. British slave traders were the chief suppliers of Cuba’s slaves in the eighteenth century; in the nineteenth century Britain became the greatest threat to Cuba's prosperity when she attempted to make Spain follow her example and abolish the slave trade. Dr Murray’s study, based on a thorough examination of British and Spanish records, reveals how important British influence was on the course of Cuban history.

Were slaves property or human beings under the law? Antebellum Southern judges designed efficient laws that protected property rights and helped slavery remain economically viable, laws that sheltered the persons embodied by that propertySH-the slaves themselves. Unintentionally, these judges generated rules applicable to ordinary Americans. Wahl provides a rigorous, compelling economic analysis of the common law of Southern slavery, inspecting thousands of legal disputes.

The explosive growth of the Atlantic slave trade in the second half of the seventeenth century made the international trade in Africans one of the world's largest industries. This book explores the operation of that industry in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, focusing on the market behaviour of the Royal African Company - the largest English company engaged in the slave trade - and the sugar planters of the Caribbean, who were the trade's principal customers in English America. A richly detailed portrayal of the slave trade to English America emerges, one that shows it to have been a highly competitive and efficient transatlantic market. In revealing the existence of sophisticated and complex market behaviour in this early period of black slavery in the New World, the book adds to our understanding of the development of large-scale competitive markets, as well as to our knowledge of the efficiency of resource allocation in early English America.

This study focuses on the black biological experience in slavery, in the Caribbean. It begins with a consideration of the rapidly changing disease environment after the arrival of the Spaniards; it also looks at the slave ancestors in their West African homeland and examines the ways in which the nutritional and disease environments of that area had shaped its inhabitants. In a particularly innovative chapter, he considers the epidemiological and pathological consequences of the middle passage for newly enslaved blacks. The balance of the book is devoted to the health of the black slave in the West Indies. Using the general health and level of nutrition of the island whites as a control, Kiple pays especially close attention to the role that nutrition played in the development of diseases. The study closes with a look at the continuing demographic difficulties of the black West Indian from the abolition of slavery.

When Rape was Legal is the first book to solely focus on the widespread rape perpetrated against enslaved black women by white men in the United States. The routine practice of sexual violence against enslaved black women by white men, the motivations for this rape, and the legal context that enabled this violence are all explored and scrutinized. Enlightening analysis found that rape was not merely a result of sexual desire and opportunity, or simply a form of punishment and racial domination, but instead encompassed all of these dimensions as part of the identity of white masculinity. This provocative text highlights the significant role that white women played in enabling sexual violence against enslaved black women through a variety of responses and, at times, through their lack of response to the actions of the white men in their lives. Significantly, this book finds that sexual violence against enslaved black women was a widespread form of oppression used to perform white masculinity and reinforce an intersectional hierarchy. Additionally, white women played a vital role by enabling this sexual violence and perpetuating the subordination of themselves and those subordinate to them.

From Slavery to Freedom remains the most revered, respected, and honored text on the market. The preeminent history of African Americans, this best-selling text charts the journey of African Americans from their origins in Africa, through slavery in the Western Hemisphere, struggles for freedom in the West Indies, Latin America, and the United States, various migrations, and the continuing quest for racial equality. Building on John Hope Franklin's classic work, the ninth edition has been thoroughly rewritten by the award-winning scholar Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham. It includes new chapters and updated information based on the most current scholarship. With a new narrative that brings intellectual depth and fresh insight to a rich array of topics, the text features greater coverage of ancestral Africa, African American women, differing expressions of protest, local community activism, black internationalism, civil rights and black power, as well as the election of our first African American president in 2008. The text also has a fresh new 4-color design with new charts, maps, photographs, paintings, and illustrations. Instructors and students can now access their course content through the Connect digital learning platform by purchasing either standalone Connect access or a bundle of print and Connect access. McGraw-Hill Connect (R) is a subscription-based learning service accessible online through your personal computer or tablet. Choose this option if your instructor will require Connect to be used in the course. Your subscription to Connect includes the following: * SmartBook (R) - an adaptive digital version of the course textbook that personalizes your reading experience based on how well you are learning the content. * Access to your instructor's homework assignments, quizzes, syllabus, notes, reminders, and other important files for the course. * Progress dashboards that quickly show how you are performing on your assignments and tips for improvement. * The option to purchase (for a small fee) a print version of the book. This binder-ready, loose-leaf version includes free shipping. Complete system requirements to use Connect can be found here: http://www.mheducation.com/highered/platforms/connect/training-support-students.html

When Rape was Legal is the first book to solely focus on the widespread rape perpetrated against enslaved black women by white men in the United States. The routine practice of sexual violence against enslaved black women by white men, the motivations for this rape, and the legal context that enabled this violence are all explored and scrutinized. Enlightening analysis found that rape was not merely a result of sexual desire and opportunity, or simply a form of punishment and racial domination, but instead encompassed all of these dimensions as part of the identity of white masculinity. This provocative text highlights the significant role that white women played in enabling sexual violence against enslaved black women through a variety of responses and, at times, through their lack of response to the actions of the white men in their lives. Significantly, this book finds that sexual violence against enslaved black women was a widespread form of oppression used to perform white masculinity and reinforce an intersectional hierarchy. Additionally, white women played a vital role by enabling this sexual violence and perpetuating the subordination of themselves and those subordinate to them.

This book explores the formation of the African-American identity through the theory of cultural trauma. The trauma in question is slavery, not as an institution or as personal experience, but as collective memory--a pervasive remembrance that grounded a people's sense of itself. Ron Eyerman offers insights into the intellectual and generational conflicts of identity-formation which have a truly universal significance, and provides a new and compelling account of the birth of African-American identity.

This book explores the formation of the African-American identity through the theory of cultural trauma. The trauma in question is slavery, not as an institution or as personal experience, but as collective memory--a pervasive remembrance that grounded a people's sense of itself. Ron Eyerman offers insights into the intellectual and generational conflicts of identity-formation which have a truly universal significance, and provides a new and compelling account of the birth of African-American identity.

Stephen Foster's "My Old Kentucky Home" has been designated as the official state song and performed at the Kentucky Derby for decades. In light of the ongoing social justice movement to end racial inequality, many have questioned whether the song should be played at public events, given its inaccurate depiction of slavery in the state. In Slavery and Freedom in the Bluegrass State, editor Gerald L. Smith presents a collection of powerful essays that uncover the long-forgotten stories of pain, protest, and perseverance of African Americans in Kentucky. Using the song and the museum site of My Old Kentucky Home as a central motif, the chapters move beyond historic myths to bring into sharper focus the many nuances of Black life. Chronologically arranged, they present fresh insights on such topics as the domestic slave trade, Black Shakers, rebellion and racial violence prior to the Civil War, the fortitude of Black women as they pressed for political and educational equality, the intersection of race and sports, and the controversy over a historic monument. Taken as a whole, this groundbreaking collection introduces readers to the strategies African Americans cultivated to negotiate race and place within the context of a border state. Ultimately, the book gives voice to the thoughts, desires, and sacrifices of generations of African Americans whose stories have been buried in the past.

This volume sets out a new paradigm that increases our understanding of African culture and the forces that led to its transformation during the period of the Atlantic slave trade and beyond, putting long due emphasis on the importance of Central African culture to the cultures of the United States, Brazil, and the Caribbean. Focusing on the Kongo/Angola culture zone, the book illustrates how African peoples re-shaped their cultural institutions as they interacted with Portuguese slave traders up to 1800, then follows Central Africans through all the regions where they were taken as slaves and captives.

The story of the anti-slavery movement in Ireland is little known, yet when Frederick Douglass visited the country in 1845, he described Irish abolitionists as the most 'ardent' that he had ever encountered. Moreover, their involvement proved to be an important factor in ending the slave trade, and later slavery, in both the British Empire and in America. While Frederick Douglass remains the most renowned black abolitionist to visit Ireland, he was not the only one. This publication traces the stories of ten black abolitionists, including Douglass, who travelled to Ireland in the decades before the American Civil War, to win support for their cause. It opens with former slave, Olaudah Equiano, kidnapped as a boy from his home in Africa, and who was hosted by the United Irishmen in the 1790s; it closes with the redoubtable Sarah Parker Remond, who visited Ireland in 1859 and chose never to return to America. The stories of these ten men and women, and their interactions with Ireland, are diverse and remarkable.

Final Freedom looks at the struggle among legal thinkers, politicians, and ordinary Americans in the North and the border states to find a way to abolish slavery that would overcome the inadequacies of the Emancipation Proclamation. Michael Vorenberg tells the dramatic story of the creation of a constitutional amendment and argues that the crucial consideration of emancipation happened after, not before the Emancipation Proclamation; that the debate over final freedom was shaped by a level of volatility in party politics underestimated by previous historians, and that the abolition of slavery by constitutional amendment represented a novel method of reform that transformed attitudes toward the Constitution. Michael Vorenberg is an assistant professor of history at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. He was a research assistant to David Herbert Donald for his prize-winning biography, Lincoln, and he is a contributor to the Journal of the Abraham Lincoln Association and the Reader's Companion to the American Presidency. This is his first book.

They Knew Lincoln, first published in 1942, captures impressions of Abraham Lincoln by African Americans who personally knew and interacted with him in Springfield, Illinois, and Washington, DC. Dr. John Washington, an African American collector of Lincoln memorabilia, who grew up in the shadow of Ford's Theatre in the late 19th century, gathered stories through personal interviews with Lincoln's African American acquaintances or their children. They include Lincoln's barbers, White House servants, waiters, doorkeepers and others. A large section is devoted to Mary Lincoln's African American seamstress and confidant Elizabeth Keckley. Washington conducted research in collections across the Southeast and Midwest; he interviewed elderly African Americans in Washington, Maryland, and Virginia; and he reached out to the foremost Lincoln scholars and collectors of his era, hoping for new leads and new information. This remarkable book was originally published by E.P. Dutton, including a strong introduction by the famed poet and Lincoln biographer Carl Sandburg. The "collection of Negro stories, memories, legends about Lincoln" seemed "to fill such an obvious gap in the material about Lincoln that one wonders why no one ever did it before." Even in the twenty-first century, They Knew Lincoln remains unsurpassed as a study of the African Americans who knew Abraham and Mary Todd Lincoln. In recent years historians have regularly turned to Washington's book as a crucial source of information about the Lincolns' domestic world and about black Washington in the Civil War era. Yet the book has never been reprinted and remains largely unavailable. This reissue reproduces the original text in full and the rare photos that appeared in the original book (as well as some additional ones of John E. Washington), along with a significant original essay by Kate Masur about the publication of the book, its author, and the subjects covered by this unusual work.