In a real contribution to the literature of American slavery,
Berlin (History/Univ. of Maryland, College Park; co-editor,
Families and Freedom, 1997) sketches the complex evolution of that
institution in the American colonies and the early US. Berlin
divides his account into three periods in which, he contends,
slaves had vastly different experiences: the charter generations,
made up of the first arrivals in the 17th and early 18th centuries,
and their descendants; the plantation generations, which comprised
the intermediate generations that cultivated the great staples on
which the colonial American economy was based; and the
revolutionary generations, which consisted of those who sought
freedom in the wake of the promise of the American Revolution. In
so doing, Berlin traces the development of a "society with slaves"
- that is, in which slavery was a marginal institution that
represented only one among many labor sources - into a "slave
society" in which slavery was not only central to the economy but
formed the basis of all social institutions. In societies with
slaves, such as the northern US, slaves enjoyed a surprising degree
of autonomy, maintained their identity as Africans to a large
extent, owned property, often negotiated with their masters over
the terms of their enslavement, and sometimes ultimately obtained
their freedom. In the deep South by contrast, the evolution of the
society with slaves into a slave society was accelerated by the
emergence of a planter class and consolidated by the growth of
cotton as a mass export crop. Here plantation slavery began to
assume the patriarchal and corporate features familiar to us today.
However, as the author notes, at the beginning of the 19th century,
"the vast majority of black people, slave and free, did not reside
in the black belt, grow cotton, or subscribe to Christianity." A
cogently argued, well-researched narrative that points to the
complex nature of American slavery, the falsity of many of our
stereotypes, and the unique world wrought by the slaves themselves.
(Kirkus Reviews)
Today most Americans, black and white, identify slavery with
cotton, the deep South, and the African-American church. But at the
beginning of the nineteenth century, after almost two hundred years
of African-American life in mainland North America, few slaves grew
cotton, lived in the deep South, or embraced Christianity. Many
Thousands Gone traces the evolution of black society from the first
arrivals in the early seventeenth century through the Revolution.
In telling their story, Ira Berlin, a leading historian of southern
and African-American life, reintegrates slaves into the history of
the American working class and into the tapestry of our nation.
Laboring as field hands on tobacco and rice plantations, as skilled
artisans in port cities, or soldiers along the frontier, generation
after generation of African Americans struggled to create a world
of their own in circumstances not of their own making. In a
panoramic view that stretches from the North to the Chesapeake Bay
and Carolina lowcountry to the Mississippi Valley, Many Thousands
Gone reveals the diverse forms that slavery and freedom assumed
before cotton was king. We witness the transformation that occurred
as the first generations of creole slaves-who worked alongside
their owners, free blacks, and indentured whites-gave way to the
plantation generations, whose back-breaking labor was the sole
engine of their society and whose physical and linguistic isolation
sustained African traditions on American soil. As the nature of the
slaves' labor changed with place and time, so did the relationship
between slave and master, and between slave and society. In this
fresh and vivid interpretation, Berlin demonstrates that the
meaning of slavery and of race itself was continually renegotiated
and redefined, as the nation lurched toward political and economic
independence and grappled with the Enlightenment ideals that had
inspired its birth.
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