The seven contributions contained in this collection address various forms of manumission throughout the American South as well as the Caribbean. Topics include color, class, and identity on the eve of the Haitian revolution; where free persons of color stood in the hierarchy of wealth in antebellum

In this thoughtful book, Dale W. Tomich explores the contested relationship between slavery and capitalism. Tracing slavery's integral role in the formation of a capitalist world economy, he reinterprets the development of the world economy through the "prism of slavery." Through a sustained critique of Marxism, world-systems theory, and new economic history, Tomich develops an original conceptual framework for answering theoretical and historical questions about the nexus between slavery and the world economy. The author explores how particular slave systems were affected by their integration into the world market, the international division of labor, and the interstate system. He further examines the ways that the particular "local" histories of such slave regimes illuminate processes of world economic change. His deft use of specific New World examples of slave production as local sites of global transformation highlights the influence of specific geographies and local agency in shaping different slave zones. Tomich's cogent analysis of the struggles over the organization of work and labor discipline in the French West Indian colony of Martinique vividly illustrates the ways that day-to-day resistance altered the relationship between master and slave, precipitated crises in sugar cultivation, and created the local conditions for the transition to a post-slavery economy and society.

Seymour Drescher's regular, deeply-thought and carefully nuanced arguments have periodically reshaped how we think of the subject of the history of slavery itself. He has discussed the impact of economic and cultural factors on human behaviour and has shown that historical evidence does not lead to easy answers. He has changed the way in which we now look at abolitionism and has destroyed the linear explanation of economic decline. This books gathers together some of Drescher's key essays in the field.

This text studies the attitudes of the founding "fathers" toward slavery. Specifically, it examines the views of Thomas Jefferson reflected in his life and writings and those of other founders as expressed in the Northwest Ordinance, the Constitutional Convention and the Constitution itself, and the fugitive slave legislation of the 1790s. The author contends: slavery fatally permeated the founding of the American republic; the original constitution was, as the abilitionists later maintained, "a covnenant with death"; and Jefferson's anti-slavery reputation is undeserved and most historians and biographers have prettified Jefferson's record on slavery.

This title focuses on the post-emancipation period in the Caribbean and how local societies dealt with the new socio-economic conditions. Scholars from Jamaica, the Virgin Islands, England, Denmark and The Netherlands link this era with the contemporary Caribbean."

Interpreting Slavery at Museums and Historic Sites aims to move the field forward in its collective conversation about the interpretation of slavery-acknowledging the criticism of the past and acting in the present to develop an inclusive interpretation of slavery. Presenting the history of slavery in a comprehensive and conscientious manner is difficult and requires diligence and compassion-for the history itself, for those telling the story, and for those hearing the stories-but it's a necessary part of our collective narrative about our past, present, and future. This book features best practices for: *Interpreting slavery across the country and for many people. The history of slavery, while traditionally interpreted primarily on southern plantations, is increasingly recognized as relevant at historic sites across the nation. It is also more than just an African-American/European-American story-it is relevant to the history of citizens of Latino, Caribbean, African and indigenous descent, as well. It is also pertinent to those descended from immigrants who arrived after slavery, whose stories are deeply intertwined with the legacy of slavery and its aftermath. *Developing support within an institution for the interpretation of slavery. Many institutions are reticent to approach such a potentially volatile subject, so this book examines how proponents at several sites, including Monticello and Mount Vernon, were able to make a strong case to their constituents. *Training interpreters in not only a depth of knowledge of the subject but also the confidence to speak on this controversial issue in public and the compassion to handle such a sensitive historical issue. The book will be accessible and of interest for professionals at all levels in the public history field, as well as students at the undergraduate and graduate levels in museum studies and public history programs.

Contents:
Acknowledgements Foreword Isobel Armstrong Introduction Carl Plasa and Betty J. Ring 1. Looks That Kill: Violence and Representation In Aphra Behn's Oroonoko Anne Fogarty 2. Sex, Slavery and Rights in Mary Wollstonecraft's Vindications Jane Moore 3. That Mild Beam: Enlightenment and Enslavement in William Blake's Visions of the Daughters of Albion Steven Vine 4. Silent Revolt: Slavery and the Politics of Metaphor in Jane Eyre Carl Plasa 5. Anglo-American Connections: Elizabeth Gaskell, Harriet Beecher Stowe and the Iron of Slavery Elizabeth Jean Sabiston 6. Painting by Numbers: Figuring Frederick Douglass Betty J.Ring 7. Perilous Passages in Harriet Jacobs's Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl Jon Hauss 8. The Irony of Idealism: William Faulkner and the South's Construction of the Mulatto David Lawrence Rogers 9. Prophesying Bodies: Calling for a Politics of Collectivity in Toni Morrison's Beloved Notes on Contributors Index

Chronicles how American culture - deeply rooted in white supremacy, slavery and capitalism - finds its origin story in the 17th century European colonization of Africa and North America, exposing the structural origins of American looting Virtually no part of the modern United States--the economy, education, constitutional law, religious institutions, sports, literature, economics, even protest movements--can be understood without first understanding the slavery and dispossession that laid its foundation. To that end, historian Gerald Horne digs deeply into Europe's colonization of Africa and the New World, when, from Columbus's arrival until the Civil War, some 13 million Africans and some 5 million Native Americans were forced to build and cultivate a society extolling "liberty and justice for all." The seventeenth century was, according to Horne, an era when the roots of slavery, white supremacy, and capitalism became inextricably tangled into a complex history involving war and revolts in Europe, England's conquest of the Scots and Irish, the development of formidable new weaponry able to ensure Europe's colonial dominance, the rebel merchants of North America who created "these United States," and the hordes of Europeans whose newfound opportunities in this "free" land amounted to "combat pay" for their efforts as "white" settlers. Centering his book on the Eastern Seaboard of North America, the Caribbean, Africa, and what is now Great Britain, Horne provides a deeply researched, harrowing account of the apocalyptic loss and misery that likely has no parallel in human history. The Apocalypse of Settler Colonialism is an essential book that will not allow history to be told by the victors. It is especially needed now, in the age of Trump. For it has never been more vital, Horne writes, "to shed light on the contemporary moment wherein it appears that these malevolent forces have received a new lease on life."

Frontiers of servitude explores the fundamental ideas behind early French thinking about Atlantic slavery in little-examined printed and archival sources, focusing on what 'made' a slave, what was unique about Caribbean labour, and what strategic approaches meant in interacting with slaves. From c. 1620 -1750, authoritative discourses were confronted with new social realities, and servitude was accompanied by continuing moral uncertainties. Slavery gave the ownership of labour and even time, but slaves were a troubling presence. Colonists were wary of what slaves knew, and were aware of how imperfect the strategies used to control them were. Commentators were conscious of the fragility of colonial society, with its social and ecological frontiers, its renegade slaves, and its population born to free fathers and slave mothers. This book will interest specialists and more general readers interested in the history and literature of the Atlantic and Caribbean. -- .

Between 1500 and 1900, the various parts of the Atlantic world became increasingly integrated into an expanding capitalist economy. This collection of essays examines the different forms of unfree labour that contributed to the development of this world and, by extension, the debates and protests that emerged concerning labour servitude and the abolition of slavery in the West. Comparative in perspective, the essays focus on particular regions (Africa, Britain, the Caribbean and Amerindia) and on specific types of labour (slavery, pawnship, impressment, tribute, indentured and contract labour) in ways that transcend traditional areas of specialization. Together they offer new insight into the patterns and intensity of labour servitude in the West and into the relationships between core and peripheral areas of the first capital world economy.

This collection of essays examines the different forms of unfree labour that contributed to the development of the Atlantic world and, by extension, the debates and protests that emerged concerning labour servitude and the abolition of slavery in the West.

The transition from chattel slavery to forced labour in Africa and the Caribbean during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries has commanded increasing attention from scholars in recent years. The Wages of Slavery tackles this subject from a protoproletarian perspective, studies new labour regimes in Africa and the Caribbean, and discusses work practices before and after emancipation the nature of the working week, subsistence and surplus for slaves and free person, and labour negotiations and confrontations.

Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize Widely hailed as a "powerfully written" history about America's beginnings (Annette Gordon-Reed), New England Bound fundamentally changes the story of America's seventeenth-century origins. Building on the works of giants like Bernard Bailyn and Edmund S. Morgan, Wendy Warren has not only "mastered that scholarship" but has now rendered it in "an original way, and deepened the story" (New York Times Book Review). While earlier histories of slavery largely confine themselves to the South, Warren's "panoptical exploration" (Christian Science Monitor) links the growth of the northern colonies to the slave trade and examines the complicity of New England's leading families, demonstrating how the region's economy derived its vitality from the slave trading ships coursing through its ports. And even while New England Bound explains the way in which the Atlantic slave trade drove the colonization of New England, it also brings to light, in many cases for the first time ever, the lives of the thousands of reluctant Indian and African slaves who found themselves forced into the project of building that city on a hill. We encounter enslaved Africans working side jobs as con artists, enslaved Indians who protested their banishment to sugar islands, enslaved Africans who set fire to their owners' homes and goods, and enslaved Africans who saved their owners' lives. In Warren's meticulous, compelling, and hard-won recovery of such forgotten lives, the true variety of chattel slavery in the Americas comes to light, and New England Bound becomes the new standard for understanding colonial America.

Combining established work with that of recent provocative scholarship on the antebellum South, this collection of essays puts students in touch with some of the central debates in this dynamic area. It includes substantial excerpts from the work of Eugene Genovese and Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, who lay out the influential interpretation of the South as a "paternalistic" society and culture, and contributions from more recent scholars who provide dissenting or alternative interpretations of the relations between masters and slaves, men and women. The essays draw on a wide range of disciplines, including economics, psychology and anthropology to investigate the nature of plantation and family life.
Contributions by established scholars include Bertram Wyatt-Brown's provocative essay on slave psychology, excerpts from Sterling Stuckey's analysis of the African roots of slave religion and folklore, and Robert William Fogel's newest synthesis of the work on the economics of slavery. Essays by youngerhistorians, including Deborah White, Joan Cashin, Norrence T. Jones, Jr. and Seven M. Stowe probe family relationships among whites and blacks on slave plantations.

Combining established work with that of recent provocative scholarship on the antebellum South, this collection of essays puts students in touch with some of the central debates in this field. It includes excerpts from the work of Eugene Genovese and Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, who lay out the influential interpretation of the South as a "paternalistic" society and culture, and contributions from more recent scholars who provide dissenting or alternative interpretations of the relations between masters and slaves and men and women. The essays draw on a wide range of disciplines, including economics, psychology and anthropology to investigate the nature of plantation and family life in the South. Explanatory notes guide the reader through each essay and the editor's introduction places the work in its historiographical context. Contributors include Eugene Genovese, Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, Bertram Wyatt-Brown, Sterling Stuckey, Robert William Fogel, Deborah Gray White and Joan E. Cashin.

Truth's landmark slave narrative chronicles her experiences as a slave in upstate New York and her transformation into an extraordinary abolitionist, feminist, orator, and preacher. Based on the complete 1884 edition, this volume includes the "Book of Life," a collection of letters and sketches about Truth's life written subsequent to the original 1850 publication of the Narrative, and "A Memorial Chapter," a sentimental account of her death.

Winner of the 2015 LGBT Studies Award presented by the Lambda Literary Foundation Unearths connections between homoeroticism, cannibalism, and cultures of consumption in the context of American literature and US slave culture that has largely been ignored until now Scholars of US and transatlantic slavery have largely ignored or dismissed accusations that Black Americans were cannibalized. Vincent Woodard takes the enslaved person's claims of human consumption seriously, focusing on both the literal starvation of the slave and the tropes of cannibalism on the part of the slaveholder, and further draws attention to the ways in which Blacks experienced their consumption as a fundamentally homoerotic occurrence. The Delectable Negro explores these connections between homoeroticism, cannibalism, and cultures of consumption in the context of American literature and US slave culture. Utilizing many staples of African American literature and culture, such as the slave narratives of Olaudah Equiano, Harriet Jacobs, and Frederick Douglass, as well as other less circulated materials like James L. Smith's slave narrative, runaway slave advertisements, and numerous articles from Black newspapers published in the nineteenth century, Woodard traces the racial assumptions, political aspirations, gender codes, and philosophical frameworks that dictated both European and white American arousal towards Black males and hunger for Black male flesh. Woodard uses these texts to unpack how slaves struggled not only against social consumption, but also against endemic mechanisms of starvation and hunger designed to break them. He concludes with an examination of the controversial chain gang oral sex scene in Toni Morrison's Beloved, suggesting that even at the end of the twentieth and beginning of the twenty-first century, we are still at a loss for language with which to describe Black male hunger within a plantation culture of consumption.

This book delineates the discovery of a previously unknown manuscript of a letter from Granville Sharp, the first British abolitionist, to the "Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty." In the letter, Sharp demands that the Admiralty bring murder charges against the crew of the Zong for forcing 132 enslaved Africans overboard to their deaths. Uncovered by Michelle Faubert at the British Library in 2015, the letter is reproduced here, accompanied by her examination of its provenance and significance for the history of slavery and abolition. As Faubert argues, the British Library manuscript is the only fair copy of Sharp's letter, and extraordinary evidence of Sharp's role in the abolition of slavery.

This volume examines the prevalence, function, and socio-political effects of slavery discourse in the major theological formulations of the late third to early fifth centuries AD, arguably the most formative period of early Christian doctrine. The question the book poses is this: in what way did the Christian theologians of the third, fourth, and early fifth centuries appropriate the discourse of slavery in their theological formulations, and what could the effect of this appropriation have been for actual physical slaves? This fascinating study is crucial reading for anyone with an interest in early Christianity or Late Antiquity, and slavery more generally.

"The Culture of English Antislavery" is an intervention in the lively international debate of recent years about the relation of anti-slavery in Britain to the deep changes of the period of the Industrial Revolution. It offers an account of the overall shape of organized anti-slavery from its beginnings in the 1780s and provides new perspectives from which to assess contending interpretations of antislavery. The evolution of antislavery is portrayed as a series of changing alliances of different and sometimes conflicting religious traditions. The successive alliances of abolitionists are analyzed through the concept of a culture of reform embracing ideology, organizational and propaganda forms and the more intimate connections and rituals which reformers used to reinforce their identity and solidarity. The result is a definition of the middle class "reform mentality" which links the antislavery work of reformers to social improvement and to campaigns for transatlantic reform. The analysis is further grounded in short narratives about reform in different communities in different moments. This book should be of interest to students and teachers of social history and cultural studies.

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 profiles the port of Charles Town, South Carolina, during the two-year period leading up to the Declaration of Independence. It focuses on the dramatic hanging and burning of Thomas Jeremiah, a free black harbor pilot and firefighter accused by the patriot party of plotting a slave insurrection during the tumultous spring and summer of 1775. To examine the world of this wealthy, slave-holding African American through his trial and execution, William R. Ryan uses a wide array of letters, naval records, personal and official correspondence, memoirs, and newspapers. He shows that the black majority of the South Carolina Low Country managed to assist the British in their invasion efforts, despite patriot attempts to frighten Afro-Carolinians into passivity and submission. Although Whigs attempted, through brutality and violence, to keep their slaves from participating in the conflict, Afro-Carolinians became actively involved in the struggle between colonists and the Crown as spies, messengers, navigators and marauders. The book demonstrates that an understanding of what was going on in this vital seaport during the mid-1770s has broader implications for the study of the Atlantic world, African American history, naval history, urban race relations, labor history, and the turbulent politics of America's move toward independence.

Think of maritime slavery, and the notorious Middle Passage - the unprecedented, forced migration of enslaved Africans across the Atlantic - readily comes to mind. This so-called 'middle leg' - from Africa to the Americas - of a supposed trading triangle linking Europe, Africa, and the Americas naturally captures attention for its scale and horror. After all, the Middle Passage was the largest forced, transoceanic migration in world history, now thought to have involved about 12.5 million African captives shipped in about 44,000 voyages that sailed between 1514 and 1866. No other coerced migration matches it for sheer size or gruesomeness. Maritime slavery is not, however, just about the movement of people as commodities, but rather, the involvement of all sorts of people, including slaves, in the transportation of those human commodities. Maritime slavery is thus not only about objects being moved but also about subjects doing the moving. Some slaves were actors, not simply the acted-upon. They were pilots, sailors, canoemen, divers, linguists, porters, stewards, cooks, and cabin boys, not forgetting all the ancillary workers in ports such as stevedores, warehousemen, labourers, washerwomen, tavern workers, and prostitutes. Maritime Slavery reflects this current interest in maritime spaces, and covers all the major Oceans and Seas. This book was originally published as a special issue of Slavery and Abolition.

This title, first published in 1995, explores the history of the American Missionary Association (AMA) - an abolitionist group founded in New York in 1846, whose primary focus was to abolish slavery, to promote racial equality and Christian values and to educate African Americans. This title will be of interest to students of history and education.