Anton de Kom's We Slaves of Suriname is a literary masterpiece as well as a fierce indictment of racism and colonialism. In this classic book, published here in English for the first time, the Surinamese writer and resistance leader recounts the history of his homeland, from the first settlements by Europeans in search of gold through the era of the slave trade and the period of Dutch colonial rule, when the old slave mentality persisted, long after slavery had been formally abolished. 159 years after the abolition of slavery in Suriname and 88 years after its initial publication, We Slaves of Suriname has lost none of its brilliance and power.

VirginiaOs most prominent statesman had a profound influence on the American Founding. Of the first five presidents elected, four of them were Virginians. Old Dominion thus held an influential position in the Union. The Founders held a reluctant tolerance of slavery, yet every leading Founder believed that slavery was wrong. They based this argument on the natural rights all men, all humans, possessed. With a natural rights understanding of the American Founding, it is an inescapable conclusion that slavery is a violation of those rights. However, the Founders expressed their distaste of the peculiar institution in different ways. All wrote privately about their aversion of the institution, and some took unmistakable public positions. Several also found ways to demonstrate implicitly their opinion about slavery. Because of its influential position, the political direction of Old Dominion was a bellwether for the Union. During the 1829-1832, in two instances, Virginians debated the future of slavery in their state. First, in the Constitutional Convention in 1829-30 they debated the existence of natural rights and whether those rights were a guide for statesmanship. During this convention there was an attack on natural rights that set the stage for the next great deliberation over slavery. Second, they explicitly discussed ending slavery in the House of Delegates after the Nat Turner insurrection in 1831-32. The Delegates of the day rejected the emancipation of the slaves as a moral and political necessity. Virginians had the opportunity to place slavery on the road to gradual extinction. They had an opportunity to reaffirm the principles of liberty, but ultimately that argument lost. The forces of self-interest defeated those who articulated the principles of the Declaration of Independence. This was solidified when Thomas Roderick Dew wrote his review of the debates in the House of Delegates. As a result of his arguments, the pro-slavery argument proceeded apace in Virginia with Dew being instrumental in the development of the Opositive goodO thesis.

Virginia's most prominent statesman had a profound influence on the American Founding. Of the first five presidents elected, four of them were Virginians. Old Dominion thus held an influential position in the Union. The Founders held a reluctant tolerance of slavery, yet every leading Founder believed that slavery was wrong. They based this argument on the natural rights all men, all humans, possessed. With a natural rights understanding of the American Founding, it is an inescapable conclusion that slavery is a violation of those rights. However, the Founders expressed their distaste of the peculiar institution in different ways. All wrote privately about their aversion of the institution, and some took unmistakable public positions. Several also found ways to demonstrate implicitly their opinion about slavery. Because of its influential position, the political direction of Old Dominion was a bellwether for the Union. During the 1829-1832, in two instances, Virginians debated the future of slavery in their state. First, in the Constitutional Convention in 1829-30 they debated the existence of natural rights and whether those rights were a guide for statesmanship. During this convention there was an attack on natural rights that set the stage for the next great deliberation over slavery. Second, they explicitly discussed ending slavery in the House of Delegates after the Nat Turner insurrection in 1831-32. The Delegates of the day rejected the emancipation of the slaves as a moral and political necessity. Virginians had the opportunity to place slavery on the road to gradual extinction. They had an opportunity to reaffirm the principles of liberty, but ultimately that argument lost. The forces of self-interest defeated those who articulated the principles of the Declaration of Independence. This was solidified when Thomas Roderick Dew wrote his review of the debates in the House of Delegates. As a result of his arguments, the pro-slavery argument proceeded apace in Virginia with Dew being instrument

Seamlessly entwining archival research and sociological debates, The Last Abolition is a lively and engaging historical narrative that uncovers the broad history of Brazilian anti-slavery activists and the trajectory of their work, from earnest beginnings to eventual abolition. In detailing their principles, alliances and conflicts, Angela Alonso offers a new interpretation of the Brazilian anti-slavery network which, combined, forged a national movement to challenge the entrenched pro-slavery status quo. While placing Brazil within the abolitionist political mobilization of the nineteenth century, the book explores the relationships between Brazilian and foreign abolitionists, demonstrating how ideas and strategies transcended borders. Available for the first time in an English language edition, with a new introduction, this award-winning volume is a major contribution to the scholarship on abolition and abolitionists.

As a young man, John B. Prentis (1788-1848) expressed outrage over slavery, but by the end of his life he had transported thousands of enslaved persons from the upper to the lower South. Kari J. Winter's life-and-times portrayal of a slave trader illuminates the clash between two American dreams: one of wealth, the other of equality.

Prentis was born into a prominent Virginia family. His grandfather, William Prentis, emigrated from London to Williamsburg in 1715 as an indentured servant and rose to become the major shareholder in colonial Virginia's most successful store. William's son Joseph became a Revolutionary judge and legislator who served alongside Thomas Jefferson, Patrick Henry, and James Madison. Joseph Jr. followed his father's legal career, whereas John was drawn to commerce. To finance his early business ventures, he began trading in slaves. In time he grew besotted with the high-stakes trade, appeasing his conscience with the populist platitudes of Jacksonian democracy, which aggressively promoted white male democracy in conjunction with white male supremacy.

Prentis's life illuminates the intertwined politics of labor, race, class, and gender in the young American nation. Participating in a revolution in the ethics of labor that upheld Benjamin Franklin as its icon, he rejected the gentility of his upbringing to embrace solidarity with "mechanicks," white working-class men. His capacity for admirable thoughts and actions complicates images drawn by elite slaveholders, who projected the worst aspects of slavery onto traders while imagining themselves as benign patriarchs. This is an absorbing story of a man who betrayed his innate sense of justice to pursue wealth through the most vicious forms of human exploitation.

A Dealer of Old Clothes: Philosophical Conversations With David Walker showcases the philosophical endeavors of David Walker, an abolitionist and intellectual who was situated in the midst of America's turbulent period of unrest just prior to the Civil War. In this text, Scriven treats Walker as a philosophical sage of sorts. He poses philosophical questions regarding race, resistance, and the problems of evil and solicits answers via Walker's text. The book contains five main chapters with three appendices containing the three respective self-edited versions of Walker's appeal, material that has never appeared together in one volume. This piece contributes to the growing body of African-American philosophy housed with the American philosophical tradition and is the first book-length philosophical treatment in Walker scholarship.

How are economists and historians to explain what happened in history? What statistical inferences can be drawn from historical data? The authors believe that explanation in history can be identified with the problems of prediction in a probabilistic universe. Using this approach, the historian can act upon his "a priori" information and his judgment of what is unique and particular in each past event, even with data hitherto considered to be intractable for statistical treatment. In essence, the book is an argument for and a demonstration of the point of view that the restricted approach of "measurement without theory" is not necessary in history, or at least not necessary in economic history.

After two chapters of theoretical introduction, the authors explore the meanings and implications of evidence, explanation and proof in history by applying econometric methods to the analysis of three major problems in 19th century economic history--the profitability of slavery in the antebellum South, income growth and development in the United States during the 1800's, and The Great Depression in the British economy; also included is a postscript on growth reassessing some current arguments in the light of the findings of these papers.

The book presents an original and provocative approach to historical problems that have long plagued economists and historians and provides the reader with a new approach to these and similar questions.

"Alfred H. Conrad" is professor of business administration at Harvard University. Much of Conrad's work has appeared in professional journals.

"John R. Meyer" is James W. Harpel Professor of Capital Formation and Economic Growth emeritus at Harvard University. Meyer's books include "The Investment Decision" and "Economics of Competition in the Transportation Industry." He has served as a board member and economic advisor for various businesses.

A extraordinary work, decades in the making: the first atlas to illustrate the entire scope of the transatlantic slave trade Winner of the Association of American Publishers' 2010 R.R. Hawkins Award and PROSE Award "A monumental chronicle of this historical tragedy."-Dwight Garner, New York Times Between 1501 and 1867, the transatlantic slave trade claimed an estimated 12.5 million Africans and involved almost every country with an Atlantic coastline. In this extraordinary book, two leading historians have created the first comprehensive, up-to-date atlas on this 350-year history of kidnapping and coercion. It features nearly 200 maps, especially created for the volume, that explore every detail of the African slave traffic to the New World. The atlas is based on an online database (www.slavevoyages.org) with records on nearly 35,000 slaving voyages-roughly 80 percent of all such voyages ever made. Using maps, David Eltis and David Richardson show which nations participated in the slave trade, where the ships involved were outfitted, where the captives boarded ship, and where they were landed in the Americas, as well as the experience of the transatlantic voyage and the geographic dimensions of the eventual abolition of the traffic. Accompanying the maps are illustrations and contemporary literary selections, including poems, letters, and diary entries, intended to enhance readers' understanding of the human story underlying the trade from its inception to its end. This groundbreaking work provides the fullest possible picture of the extent and inhumanity of one of the largest forced migrations in history.

This book explores how modern Egyptians understand the Mamluks and reveals the ways in which that historical memory is utilized for political and ideological purposes. It specifically examines the representations of the Mamluks from two historical periods: the Mamluk Sultanate era (1250-1517) and the Mamluks under the Ottoman era (1517-1811) focusing mostly on the years 1760-1811. Although the Mamluks have had a great impact on the Egyptian collective memory and modern thought, the subject to date has hardly been researched seriously, with most analyses given to stereotypical negative representations of the Mamluks in historical works. However, many Egyptian historians and intellectuals presented the Mamluk era positively, and even symbolized the Sultans as national icons. This book sheds light on the heretofore-neglected positive dimensions of the multifaceted representations of the Mamluks and addresses the ways in which modern Egyptians utilize that collective memory.

" As one of only two states in the nation to still allow slavery by the time of the Thirteenth Amendment in 1865, Kentucky's history of slavery runs deep. Based on extensive research, The Antislavery Movement in Kentucky focuses on two main antislavery movements that emerged in Kentucky during the early years of opposition. By 1820, Kentuckians such as Cassius Clay called for the emancipation of slaves -- a gradual end to slavery with compensation to owners. Others, such as Delia Webster, who smuggled three fugitive slaves across the Kentucky border to freedom in Ohio, advocated for abolition -- an immediate and uncompensated end to the institution. Neither movement was successful, yet the tenacious spirit of those who fought for what they believed contributes a proud chapter to Kentucky history.

"Resisting Bondage in Indian Ocean Africa and Asia" is the companion volume to Slavery and Resistance in Africa and Asia which was published by Routledge in 2005. This second volume, as implied by the title, recognizes the complexity of forms of bondage in the Indian Ocean world - incorporating regions running from East Africa to the Middle East, to South and Southeast Asia to the Far East - and of resistance to them. Slavery, in the conventional sense of the word, was in the region covered one of many, often overlapping, forms of unfree labor that included, in addition, various types of forced or corvee labor, debt bondage and indentured or contract labor. This volume examines resistance to forms of bondage in a variety of precolonial, colonial and postcolonial regimes, from revolt against slavery in South Africa, to resistance to colonial forced labor schemes in Somalia, the Indian Ocean islands of Mayotte and Madagascar, India, Indonesia and Indochina, and the fight of Aborigines for human rights on the cattle ranches of Northern Australia. Just as the companion volume Slavery and Resistance in Africa and Asia revealed that reactions to slavery in Africa and Asia were far more complex than the conventional historical emphasis on forms of 'revolt' implies, this collection of essays reveals an unexpectedly wide range of often very subtle forms of resistance to a variety of repressive labor regimes in the Indian Ocean world. In so doing, it will appeal to all those interested in exploring the wider debate over the structure of unfree labor regimes and resistance to them.

When the full abolition of slavery appeared on the political agenda in the Atlantic world the institutional arrangements that underpinned the peculiar institution changed dramatically. Although many have studied these transformations, their urban dimension has remained underappreciated. The contributions to this volume offer an in-depth look at cities in the British and French Caribbean, the United States, West-Central Africa, Brazil, and South Africa. Rather than treating urban slavery as a more benign counterpoint to the brutal plantation complex, the articles explore how cities were part and parcel of slave societies and demonstrate how methods of control as well as routes to emancipation changed in the century before emancipation. Urban slavery has greatly impacted urban landscapes and its legacy as well as practices of remembrance and memorialization can be found in many former slave societies.

Born in 1713 of French Huguenot stock, Philadelphia Quaker Anthony Benezet was probably the most significant force in advancing the cause against slavery and the African slave trade in the eighteenth century. However, while abolitionists like Granville Sharp, William Wilberforce, Thomas Clarkson, and John Wesley are familiar, the name "Benezet" is hardly recognized. And yet, it was his work that reinforced Sharp's legal battles, his tracts that singularly influenced both Wesley and Clarkson to join the cause, and his friendship with Benjamin Franklin that led to Franklin leading the American antislavery society after Benezet's death. To Be Silent... Would Be Criminal introduces the development of antislavery activity in America and then traces the life of Benezet, examining both his work and influence on individuals, including Wesley, Sharp, Clarkson, and Franklin. Benezet's correspondence with these and other contemporaries is reproduced here, giving insight into his relationships and his desire to build a viable network to oppose slavery. It's from a letter Benezet wrote to Lady Huntingdon, the chief administer behind the Calvinistic wing of Methodism, that the title of this book is derived: "...where the lives & natural as well as religious welfare of so vast a number of our Fellow Creatures is concerned, to be Silent, where we apprehend it a duty to speak our sense of that which causes us to go mourning on our way, would be criminal." With one exception, all of Benezet's antislavery tracts, which are otherwise available only in special archives, are replicated in full within the book, further demonstrating Benezet's uniquely significant role in the eventual victory over slavery.

The essays in this book demonstrate the importance of transatlantic and intra-American slave trafficking in the development of colonial Spanish America, highlighting the Spanish colonies' previously underestimated significance within the broader history of the slave trade. Spanish America received African captives not only directly via the transatlantic slave trade but also from slave markets in the Portuguese, English, Dutch, French, and Danish Americas, ultimately absorbing more enslaved Africans than any other imperial jurisdiction in the Americas except Brazil. The contributors focus on the histories of slave trafficking to, within, and across highly diverse regions of Spanish America throughout the entire colonial period, with themes ranging from the earliest known transatlantic slaving voyages during the sixteenth century to the evolution of antislavery efforts within the Spanish empire. Students and scholars will find the comprehensive study and analysis in From the Galleons to the Highlands invaluable in examining the study of the slave trade to colonial Spanish America.

This title discusses about religion and race in the British Atlantic. This study offers a new and challenging look at Christian institutions and practices in Britain's Caribbean and southern American colonies. Focusing on the plantation societies of Barbados, Jamaica, and South Carolina, Nicholas M. Beasley finds that the tradition of liturgical worship in these places was more vibrant and more deeply rooted in European Christianity than previously thought. In addition, Beasley argues, white colonists' attachment to religious continuity was thoroughly racialized. Church customs, sacraments, and ceremonies were a means of regulating slavery and asserting whiteness. Drawing on a mix of historical and anthropological methods, Beasley covers such topics as church architecture, pew seating customs, marriage, baptism, communion, and funerals. Colonists created an environment in sacred time and space that framed their rituals for maximum social impact, and they asserted privilege and power by privatizing some rituals and by meting out access to rituals to people of color. Throughout, Beasley is sensitive to how this culture of worship changed as each colony reacted to its own political, environmental, and demographic circumstances across time. Local factors influencing who partook in Christian rituals and how, when, and where these rituals took place could include the structure of the Anglican Church, which tended to be less hierarchical and centralized than at home in England; the level of tensions between Anglicans and Protestants; the persistence of African religious beliefs; and, colonists' attitudes toward free persons of color and elite slaves. This book enriches an existing historiography that neglects the cultural power of liturgical Christianity in the early South and the British Caribbean and offers a new account of the translation of early modern English Christianity to early America.

This important collection of essays examines the history and impact of the abolition of the slave trade and slavery in the Indian Ocean World, a region stretching from Southern and Eastern Africa to the Middle East, India, Southeast Asia and the Far East. Slavery studies have traditionally concentrated on the Atlantic slave trade and slavery in the Americas. In comparison, the Indian Ocean World slave trade has been little explored, although it started some 3,500 years before the Atlantic slave trade and persists to the present day. This volume, which follows a collection of essays The Structure of Slavery in Indian Ocean Africa and Asia (Frank Cass, 2004), examines the various abolitionist impulses, indigenous and European, in the Indian Ocean World during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It assesses their efficacy within a context of a growing demand for labour resulting from an expanding international economy and European colonisation. The essays show that in applying definitions of slavery derived from the American model, European agents in the region failed to detect or deliberately ignored other forms of slavery, and as a result the abolitionist impulse was only partly successful with the slave trade still continuing today in many parts of the Indian Ocean World.

This book puts psychological trauma at its centre. Using psychoanalysis, it assesses what was lost, how it was lost and how the loss is compulsively repeated over generations. There is a conceptualization of this trauma as circular. Such a situation makes it stubbornly persistent. It is suggested that central to the system of slavery was the separa

Previously published as a special issue of the journal Slavery and Abolition, this book brings together a series of pioneering studies, by experts in the field, on resistance to forms of bondage in Africa, Asia and the Indian Ocean world. areas, analyse the causes, duration and structure of resistance and underscore similarities and contrasts across the Africa-Asian regions. to what degree, if any, resistance was effective in alleviating the nature of bondage the book provides a comparison with the much more publicised Atlantic system. spectrum of disciplines and area studies.

Slavery in Colonial America, 1619-1776 brings together original sources and recent scholarship to trace the origins and development of African slavery in the American colonies. Distinguished scholar Betty Wood clearly explains the evolution of the transatlantic slave trade and compares the regional social and economic forces that affected the growth of slavery in early America. In addition, Wood provides a window into the reality of slavery, presenting an accurate picture of daily life throughout the colonies. As slavery became more ingrained in American society, Wood examines early forms of slave rebellion and resistance and how the reliance on enslaved labor conflicted with the ideals of a nation calling for freedom and liberty. Succinct and engaging, Slavery in Colonial America, 1619-1776 is essential reading for all interested in early American and African American history.

Slavery in Colonial America, 1619-1776 brings together original sources and recent scholarship to trace the origins and development of African slavery in the American colonies. Distinguished scholar Betty Wood clearly explains the evolution of the transatlantic slave trade and compares the regional social and economic forces that affected the growth of slavery in early America. In addition, Wood provides a window into the reality of slavery, presenting an accurate picture of daily life throughout the colonies. As slavery became more ingrained in American society, Wood examines early forms of slave rebellion and resistance and how the reliance on enslaved labor conflicted with the ideals of a nation calling for freedom and liberty. Succinct and engaging, Slavery in Colonial America, 1619-1776 is essential reading for all interested in early American and African American history.

On Slavery's Border is a bottom-up examination of how slavery and slaveholding were influenced by both the geography and the scale of the slaveholding enterprise. Missouri's strategic access to important waterways made it a key site at the periphery of the Atlantic world. By the time of statehood in 1821, people were moving there in large numbers, especially from the upper South, hoping to replicate the slave society they'd left behind. Diane Mutti Burke focuses on the Missouri counties located along the Mississippi and Missouri rivers to investigate small-scale slavery at the level of the household and neighborhood. She examines such topics as small slaveholders' child-rearing and fiscal strategies, the economics of slavery, relations between slaves and owners, the challenges faced by slave families, sociability among enslaved and free Missourians within rural neighborhoods, and the disintegration of slavery during the Civil War. Mutti Burke argues that economic and social factors gave Missouri slavery an especially intimate quality. Owners directly oversaw their slaves and lived in close proximity with them, sometimes in the same building. White Missourians believed this made for a milder version of bondage. Some slaves, who expressed fear of being sold further south, seemed to agree. Mutti Burke reveals, however, that while small slaveholding created some advantages for slaves, it also made them more vulnerable to abuse and interference in their personal lives. In a region with easy access to the free states, the perception that slavery was threatened spawned white anxiety, which frequently led to violent reassertions of supremacy.

Traces and Memories deals with the foundation, mechanisms and scope of slavery-related memorial processes, interrogating how descendants of enslaved populations reconstruct the history of their ancestors when transatlantic slavery is one of the variables of the memorial process. While memory studies mark a shift from concern with historical knowledge of events to that of memory, the book seeks to bridge the memorial representations of historical events with the production and knowledge of those events. The book offers a methodological and epistemological reflection on the challenges that are raised by archival limitations in relation to slavery and how they can be overcome. It covers topics such as the historical and memorial legacy/ies of slavery, the memorialization of slavery, the canonization and patrimonialization of the memory of slavery, the places and conditions of the production of knowledge on slavery and its circulation, the heritage of slavery and the (re)construction of (collective) identity. By offering fresh perspectives on how slavery-related sites of memory have been retrospectively (re)framed or (re)shaped, the book probes the constraints which determine the inscription of this contentious memory in the public sphere. The volume will serve as a valuable resource in the area of slavery, memory, and Atlantic studies.

THE UNTOLD STORY OF THE BERBICE SLAVE REBELLION Winner of the 2021 Cundill History Prize Winner of the 2021 Frederick Douglass Prize 'A gripping tale about the human need for freedom ... spellbinding' NPR 'Impressively detailed ... Kars provokes the reader into seeing the many sides involved in this bloody and desperate struggle with empathy and pity ... excellent' Paterson Joseph, actor and author of The Secret Diaries of Charles Ignatius Sancho 'A masterpiece ... a story for the ages' Elizabeth Fenn, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Encounters at the Heart of the World In February 1763, thousands of slaves in the Dutch colony of Berbice - in present-day Guyana - launched a massive rebellion - and very nearly succeeded. For an entire year, they fought their enslavers, dreaming of establishing a free state, what would have been the first Black republic. Instead, they vanished from history. Blood on the River is the explosive story of this forgotten revolution, an event that almost changed the face of the Americas. Historian Marjoleine Kars draws on long-buried Dutch interrogation transcripts to reconstruct a rich day-by-day account of this extraordinary event, providing a rare look at the political vision of enslaved people at the dawn of the Age of Revolution. An astonishing original work of history, Blood on the River will change our understanding of revolutions, slavery and the story of freedom in the New World.

From John Hope Franklin, America's foremost African American historian, comes this groundbreaking analysis of slave resistance and escape. A sweeping panorama of plantation life before the Civil War, this book reveals that slaves frequently rebelled against their masters and ran away from their plantations whenever they could.
For generations, important aspects about slave life on the plantations of the American South have remained shrouded. Historians thought, for instance, that slaves were generally pliant and resigned to their roles as human chattel, and that racial violence on the plantation was an aberration. In this precedent setting book, John Hope Franklin and Loren Schweninger demonstrate that, contrary to popular belief, significant numbers of slaves did in fact frequently rebel against their masters and struggled to attain their freedom. By surveying a wealth of documents, such as planters' records, petitions to county courts and state legislatures, and local newspapers, this book shows how slaves resisted, when, where, and how they escaped, where they fled to, how long they remained in hiding, and how they survived away from the plantation. Of equal importance, it examines the reactions of the white slaveholding class, revealing how they marshaled considerable effort to prevent runaways, meted out severe punishments, and established patrols to hunt down escaped slaves.
Reflecting a lifetime of thought by our leading authority in African American history, this book provides the key to truly understanding the relationship between slaveholders and the runaways who challenged the system--illuminating as never before the true nature of the South's "most peculiar institution."