Bonds of Alliance: Indigenous and Atlantic Slaveries in New France (Published for the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, Williamsburg, Virginia) - Softcover

Rushforth, Brett

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0807835587 ISBN 13: 9780807835586

Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press, 2012

Synopsis

In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, French colonists and their Native allies participated in a slave trade that spanned half of North America, carrying thousands of Native Americans into bondage in the Great Lakes, Canada, and the Caribbean. In Bonds of Alliance, Brett Rushforth reveals the dynamics of this system from its origins to the end of French colonial rule. Balancing a vast geographic and chronological scope with careful attention to the lives of enslaved individuals, this book gives voice to those who lived through the ordeal of slavery and, along the way, shaped French and Native societies.

Rather than telling a simple story of colonial domination and Native victimisation, Rushforth argues that Indian slavery in New France emerged at the nexus of two very different forms of slavery: one indigenous to North America and the other rooted in the Atlantic world. The alliances that bound French and Natives together forced a centurylong negotiation over the nature of slavery and its place in early American society. Neither fully Indian nor entirely French, slavery in New France drew upon and transformed indigenous and Atlantic cultures in complex and surprising ways.

Based on thousands of French and Algonquian-language manuscripts from Canada, France, the United States, and the Caribbean, Bonds of Alliance bridges the divide between continental and Atlantic approaches to early American history. By exploring unexpected connections between distant peoples and places, this book sheds new light on a wide range of subjects, including comparative slavery, intercultural diplomacy, colonial law, gender and sexuality, and the history of race.

About this title

About the Author

Brett Rushforth is associate professor of history at the College of William and Mary.

From the Back Cover

In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, French colonists and their Native allies participated in a slave trade that spanned half of North America, carrying thousands of Native Americans into bondage in the Great Lakes, Canada, and the Caribbean. In Bonds of Alliance, Brett Rushforth reveals the dynamics of this system from its origins to the end of French colonial rule. Balancing a vast geographic and chronological scope with careful attention to the lives of enslaved individuals, this book gives voice to those who lived through the ordeal of slavery and, along the way, shaped French and Native societies.

Edition details

• Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press
• Publication date: 2012
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0807835587
• ISBN 13: 9780807835586
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 424