Slavery, enslaved persons and abolition of slavery Books

Book SynopsisBeginning with antiquity, Reversing Sail: A History of the African Diaspora captures the essential political, cultural, social, and economic developments that shaped the black experience. The second edition updates the text of the previous edition to be current with the most recent research on the African Diaspora.Trade Review'No other study seeks to identify and globally illuminate the African diaspora from antiquity to the present day. This second edition of Reversing Sail is a must-read for general undergraduate course development, but also important for a popular informative and cognitive understanding of Africa's role in world history.' Margaret Washington, Cornell University, New York'This gem of a book conveys the uniqueness of the African diaspora among migrations of humankind. Gomez, the leading chronicler of the diaspora, elicits insight and inspiration in tracing the achievements of antiquity, the brave and effective responses to centuries of enslavement and empire, and the recent generations of creative genius in cultural leadership.' Patrick Manning, Andrew W. Mellon Professor of World History, Emeritus, University of Pittsburgh'In Reversing Sail, Michael A. Gomez gives us the full sweep of the early African diaspora - not just the story of slavery, but the story of Africans with their lives, their languages, and their civilization as it encountered Europe. For those who were enslaved, the story goes beyond the bare-bones narrative of plantation and service to include the transformation of African culture by that of America, and the African part in the creation of the culture of the Americas.' John Thornton, Boston University'Reversing Sail will endure as the most competent book to introduce generations of students to what we now characterize as the African diaspora, as well as yielding considerable knowledge on the Indian Ocean, the Black Atlantic, Atlantic History, and World History.' Toyin Falola, Frances and Sanger Mossiker Chair in the Humanities, University of Texas, Austin'Reversing Sail succeeds beautifully in its goal of introducing readers to the challenges and rewards of studying the African diaspora and laying out categories for making sense of an enormously rich subject. In so doing, Gomez demonstrates the value of approaching the stories of the African diaspora with a 'diasporic lens.'' Harvey Hill, Anglican and Episcopal History ReviewTable of ContentsPart I. 'Old' World Dimensions and the First Wave: 1. Antiquity; 2. Africans and the Bible; 3. Africans and the Islamic World; Part II. 'New' World Realities and Diaspora's Second Wave (to 1945): 4. Transatlantic moment and the dawn of modernity; 5. Enslavement; 6. Asserting the right to be; 7. Reconnecting; Part III. Empire's Dismantling and the Third Wave (since 1945): 8. Movement people; 9. Global Africa in the era of Mandela and Obama; Epilogue; Index.

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Book SynopsisBronwen Everill offers a new perspective on African global history, applying a comparative approach to freed slave settlers in Sierra Leone and Liberia to understand their role in the anti-slavery colonization movements of Britain and America.Table of ContentsList of Maps, Tables, and Illustrations Acknowledgements List of Abbreviations Introduction PART I: FOUNDATIONS Transatlantic Anti-Slavery Networks An African Middle Class Americans in Africa PART II: INTERACTIONS The Abolitionist Propaganda War Slave Trade Interventionism Commercial Rivalry and Liberian Independence Arguments for Colonial Expansion Epilogue: 1861 and Beyond Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisTy Seidule scorches us with the truth and rivets us with his fierce sense of moral urgency. --Ron ChernowIn a forceful but humane narrative, former soldier and head of the West Point history department Ty Seidule''s Robert E. Lee and Me challenges the myths and lies of the Confederate legacyand explores why some of this country's oldest wounds have never healed.Ty Seidule grew up revering Robert E. Lee. From his southern childhood to his service in the U.S. Army, every part of his life reinforced the Lost Cause myth: that Lee was the greatest man who ever lived, and that the Confederates were underdogs who lost the Civil War with honor. Now, as a retired brigadier general and Professor Emeritus of History at West Point, his view has radically changed. From a soldier, a scholar, and a southerner, Ty Seidule believes that American history demands a reckoning.In a unique blend of history and reflection, Seidule deconstructs the truth about t

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Book SynopsisThe groundbreaking debut by the award-winning author of Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments, revised and updated.Trade Review"Meticulously researched.... The 25th-anniversary edition of this pathbreaking work of scholarship is a gift to those interested in thinking deeply and expansively about slavery’s ever-running machinations." -- Omari Weekes - Vulture"Innovative.... [Hartman’s] writing is impassioned and even lyrical at times.... This is a powerful and thought-provoking examination of slavery’s far-reaching legacy." -- Publishers Weekly"Audacious. Original and provocative. What Hartman has to say about both slavery and its continuing resonances should be heard as widely as possible. A major scholarly contribution." -- Nation"The brilliance of the book—a brilliance that is considerable, formidable and rare—is present in the space Hartman leaves for the ongoing (re)production of [black] performance in all its guises and for a critical awareness of how each of those guises is always already present in and disruptive of the supposed originarity of that primal scene [of violence]." -- Fred Moten, author of The Consent Not to Be a Single Being"Sharpens our understanding of whiteness, property, and happiness in startling ways." -- David Roediger, author of Wages of Whiteness"In Scenes of Subjection, Saidiya Hartman prepared an intellectual ground for the phrase [the afterlife of slavery] to take root. Insisting that the conventional wisdom that slavery had died with legal emancipation was wrong, and that slavery was, as she put, ‘transformed rather than annulled by the 13th amendment of the US constitution,’ Hartman challenged us to consider that slavery didn’t just have a lingering trace or a shadowy aftereffect in the post-emancipation moment." -- Stephanie Smallwood, author of Saltwater Slavery

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Book SynopsisRobert Wedderburn was one of the first promoters of black power by revolutionary force, if necessary. His publications had an enormous impact in his time. The Horrors of Slavery is a vivid record of the history, ideas, and rhetoric of a leader in the movement to abolish slavery in the West Indies.

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Book SynopsisThe author compares slave societies with the ir relatively modern counterparts in the New World to show a new perspective on the history of slavery. He sheds light o n the complex ways in which ideological interests affect his torical interpretation. '

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Book SynopsisThis collection of essays offers a new paradigm, in which the trans-Saharan and trans-Atlantic worlds of slavery are brought into focus under the same lens. While slave studies have considered either trans-Atlantic or Islamic slavery, rarely has any study combined the enslavement of Africans in America and the Lands of Islam in one volume. Both the Saharan and Atlantic worlds imported enslaved populations from western and central Sudan, but in general the two markets have been treated in isolation and without reference to the common bond of Islam and the multiple roles that Islam has played in the history of slavery, whether in West Africa itself, the Americas, or the Islamic Mediterranean. Western Africa served as the point of dispersion across desert and sea, but it was also the final destination of many of those who were enslaved but who were not transported across the Atlantic or the Sahara. The relationship between Islam and slavery is explored as a series of frontiers: in the Americas between enslaved Muslims and their Christian masters and the types of resistance and accommodation that arose there; in West Africa between Muslim and non-Muslim societies and the attempts at defining who was a Muslim in terms of issues of enslavement; in North Africa between Muslim masters and the enslaved population from West Africa and the popularity of spirit possession cults. The resistance of Muslims to assimilation and the accommodation of Muslims to bondage also created other frontiers that are explored in this book.

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Book SynopsisThe New York City Slave Revolt of 1712. The First Comprehensive Investigation into the First Uprising Against Slavery in North America.

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Book SynopsisReviewed by Astrid Lustulin for Readers' Favourite: It is time to learn the stories of some nations in a more equitable way - not from the point of view of the conquerors but of the oppressed. This is why books like The Black History Truth: Jamaica by Pamela Gayle arouse great interest in a conscious reader. This book tells the story of 'The Sharpest Thorn in Britain's Caribbean Colonies,' focusing on the 16th to 19th centuries. Through extensive use of sources and images, Gayle sheds light on the injustices perpetrated by the British and analyses the stigmatization of Eurocentric historiography, which portrayed unfavorably behaviors and customs of groups of people it could not understand. Although the subject is complex, this book is clear and precise. Gayle tackles so many topics that she arouses the admiration of readers with her profound knowledge of Jamaica. She is very direct when she blames the British, but the evidence she brings is overwhelming. In The Black History Truth: Jamaica, you will not only find descriptions of struggles and injustices but also valuable information on local heroes and heroines, such as Nana Yaa Asantewaa and Queen Nanny, as well as customs that Europeans have misunderstood. Aft er reading this book, readers will understand why Jamaica was actually (as the subtitle describes it) "the sharpest thorn in Britain's Caribbean Colonies." I recommend this book to all those who want to see the history of humanity from a new perspective.Trade ReviewReviewed by K.C. Finn for Readers' Favourite: Exploring the time between the 16th and 19th centuries when Jamaica was a part of the British colonial empire, the work seeks to uncover racial injustices and celebrate the roots of the many different black cultures.

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Book SynopsisSlavery is attested throughout ancient Greek history and all over the Greek world. Unsurprisingly, then, scholarship on Greek slavery has proliferated in the past twenty-five or so years, making a holistic synthesis of such work especially desirable. This book offers a state-of-the-art guide to research on this subject, surveying recent scholarly trends and controversies and suggesting future directions for research. Topics include regional variation in slave systems; the economics of slavery; the treatment of enslaved people; sex and gender; agency, resistance, and revolt; manumission; and representations, metaphors, and legacies of Greek slavery. Readers, including those interested in slavery of other time periods, will find this book an essential resource in learning about key issues in Greek slavery studies or in pursuing their own research.

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Book SynopsisSlave Society in the City: Bridgetown, Barbados, 1680-1834 is one of the first specialised treatments of an Anglophone Caribbean port-town by a contemporary historian. Having adeptly mined the existing archival data and statistics on Bridgetown, Pedro Welch shares with readers these nuggets of information that contribute immensely to our understanding of the way slave societies functioned in the Caribbean. The book shows how life in the urban slave society departed significantly from that of the rural plantation. There is considerable evidence indicating that slaves and freed persons found and utilised 'room-to-manoeuvre options' in that urban context which allowed some of them to amass small fortunes and landholdings, act relatively freely and independently and occasionally be acknowledged almost as the equal of their white counterparts. Several areas of urban social formation are analysed in the study. Demographic issues, trade and commerce, gender issues, social and economic issues in the white enslaved and free coloured communities receive detailed treatment in this volume. Slave Society in the City is a highly original and substantial work on Caribbean historiography, whose original publication coincided with the 375th anniversary of the founding of Bridgetown, Barbados.Table of ContentsIntroduction - Uncovering the urban matrix - Urban ecology in colonial Barbados: the emergence & growth of Bridgetown - Bridgetown as port town: the maritime economy - Bridgetown as port town: interface with urban society - Demographic characteristics of the urban population - White life in an urban slave community - Life & leisure in the urban slave community - In search of the Ostrehans & their contemporaries - Reflections - Appendices - Bibliography

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Book SynopsisThe process of terminating the European Transatlantic Trade in Africans (TTA) was long and drawn-out. Although Africans, including the enslaved had long resisted its operation, abolition has traditionally been presented as a benevolent act by the British state acting under pressure from the intellectual classes and humanitarian activists. But the campaign to end the TTA cannot be separated from the resistance struggle of the Africans themselves.In Saving Souls: The Struggle to end the Transatlantic Trade in Africans, the companion volume to Trading Souls, noted Caribbean historians Hilary Beckles and Verene Shepherd trace the African experience from capture, the horrors of the Middle Passage to liberation. Their story emphasises the contributions of the victims of the enslaved even while acknowledging the critical role of the British abolitionists. Readers will learn about: The structure and conduct of the trade in African people, Details of the resistance of Africans to capture, sale and transportation, The abolition movement – involving black and white, enslaved and free, male and female, Christian and non-Christian activists, Legacies of the 1807 Act, The final Abolition Acts, namely the 1805–1806 Order-in-Council and the 1807 Act are included as appendices for easy reference.

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