American Slavery, 1619-1877
Books / Hardcover
Books › History › United States › General
ISBN: 080902568X / Publisher: Hill and Wang, June 1993
Traces the history of slavery in America, compares it with slavery in other countries, and discusses the relationships between slaves and their masters
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Peter Kolchin has written a concise, engaging overview of American slavery. His unusually broad chronological perspective begins with the colonial years and ranges through emancipation and the aftermath of the Civil War - exploring the ways in which slavery evolved and changed over two and a half centuries.Kolchin takes a broad geographical perspective as well, putting American slavery in the context of slavery elsewhere. Slavery emerged in the American colonies as part of a general trend toward use of forced labor on the periphery of an expanding Europe. In the United States the "peculiar institution" differed in important ways from slavery in other countries.Not least, American Slavery pays equal attention to slaves and their masters, focusing on the dynamic relationship between them and the centrality of that relationship to the Old South.Slavery - its history, development, and the issues it raised over the centuries - remains at the core of the American experience. Peter Kolchin's incisive synthesis fills a major gap in that experience for the general reader and for historians, who will find it both stimulating and appealing.
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