Many Thousands Gone – The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America - Hardcover

Berlin, Ira

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0674810929 ISBN 13: 9780674810921

Publisher: Harvard University Press, 1998

Synopsis

In the late 1990s, most Americans, black and white, identify slavery with cotton, the deep South, and the African-American church. But at the beginning of the 19th century, after almost 200 years of African-American life in mainland North America, few slaves grew cotton, lived in the deep South, or embraced Christianity. This text traces the evolution of black society from the first arrivals in the early-17th century through to 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 the nation. Labouring 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 making. In a panoramic view that stretches from the North to the Chesapeake Bay and Carolina lowcountry, to the Mississippi Valley, this text reveals the diverse forms that slavery and freedom assumed before cotton was king. The reader witnesses 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 labour was the sole engine of their society, and whose physical and linguistic isolation sustained African traditions on American soil.

About this title

Review

Berlin's adept mixture of economic and social history enlarges our understanding of colonial slavery and contributes fascinating new insights...[N]ovel insights permeate nearly every page...Authoritative, original, beautifully organized and composed, "Many Thousands Gone" is a striking combination of black history and the study of the evolution of slavery.--Graham Russell Hodges "America "

From the Publisher

Harvard University Press: www.hup.harvard.edu

Table of Contents: MANY THOUSANDS GONE

Prologue: Making Slavery, Making Race

Societies with Slaves: The Charter Generations
Emergence of Atlantic Creoles in the Chesapeake
Expansion of Creole Society in the North Divergent Paths in the Lowcountry
Devolution in the Lower Mississippi Valley

Slave Societies: The Plantation Generations
The Tobacco Revolution in the Chesapeake
The Rice Revolution in the Lowcountry
Growth and the Transformation of Black Life in the North
Stagnation and Transformation in the Lower Mississippi Valley

Slave and Free: The Revolutionary Generations
The Slow Death of Slavery in the North
The Union of African-American Society in the Upper South
Fragmentation in the Lower South
Slavery and Freedom in the Lower Mississippi Valley

Epilogue: Making Race, Making Slavery

Tables

Abbreviations

Notes

Acknowledgments

Index

Edition details

• Publisher: Harvard University Press
• Publication date: 1998
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0674810929
• ISBN 13: 9780674810921
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 512