Slavery, enslaved persons and abolition of slavery Books

Book SynopsisProvides an assessment of the Atlantic slave trade and upends conventional wisdom by shifting attention from the crops slaves who were forced to produce to the foods they planted for their own nourishment.Trade Review"[An] essential reading for anyone trying to understand the long-ignored interaction between environmental change, global commerce, natural knowledge, and slavery." Times Higher Education "An important contribution to literature on the Columbian Exchange." -- Frederick Douglass Opie Agricultural History Review "Shadow of Slavery is thorough, cogent, creative in its use of scarce historical materials, and beautifully illustrated with color plates." -- Susanne Freidberg Intl Journal Of African Historical Stds "Essential to any environmentally informed study of slavery in the Americas." Isle: Interdis Stds In Lit & Environ "This is a wonderful book, one I will recommend to colleagues, friends, and family alike." Common-Place "Groundbreaking... This informative and enjoyable book offers not your regular meat and potatoes, but collard greens, cornbread, and gumbo." -- Kellie Carter Jackson, Gonzaga University Jrnl African American Hist "A very readable account that envelops a sobering look at [the] slave trade." American Herb Assoc Newsletter "An engaging and compelling narrative that opens our eyes and awakens our palates... I highly recommend it to all." -- Henry John Drewal, University of Wisconsin Economic BotanyTable of ContentsLIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Introduction 1 / Food and the African Past 2 / African Plants on the Move 3 / African Food Crops and the Guinea Trade 4 / African Food and the Atlantic Crossing 5 / Maroon Subsistence Strategies 6 / The Africanization of Plantation Food Systems 7 / Botanical Gardens of the Dispossessed 8 / Guinea’s Plants and European Empire 9 / African Animals and Grasses in the NewWorld Tropics 10 / Memory Dishes of the African Diaspora NOTES SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY INDEX

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Book SynopsisDobie explores the place of the colonial world in the culture of the French Enlightenment, tracing the displacement of colonial questions onto two familiar aspects of Enlightenment thought: Orientalism and fascination with Amerindian cultures.Trade Review"Trading Places is both hugely ambitious and carried off brilliantly. Madeleine Dobie shows how the theme of slavery is displaced into an Orientalist context and explains why Atlantic slavery was unrepresentable until the 1770s, when economic theories were developed to frame it in acceptable ways. By going beyond text and image to explore the material culture of textiles and furnishings, Dobie demonstrates that cultural studies can be both historical and humane."—Dena Goodman, University of Michigan, author of Becoming a Woman in the Age of Letters"Trading Places deals with an epochal cultural repression—the absence, in the early period of French colonialism, of depictions of conquest and its consequences. Madeleine Dobie reads this absence through the contradictions, displacements, denegations, and maskings that surround its seeming silence. Trading Places restores a fundamental element to French literary history, and to the history of colonialism's economic and social effects and its material culture. It helps us to understand economic, geopolitical, and racial domination in a period when such domination suppressed its own representations. This is a pathbreaking book of literary, cultural, and historical analysis."—Richard Terdiman, University of California, Santa CruzTable of ContentsIntroduction: Trading PlacesPart I: East Meets West 1. Reorienting Slavery 2. Oriental Veneers 3. The "Fabric of Two Worlds"Part II: Savages and Slaves 4. The Trope of Colonial Encounter 5. Slaves and the Noble SavagePart III: Liberty, Equality, Economy 6. Colonial Political Economy 7. Economic SentimentsConclusion: Slavery and Postcolonial MemoryAppendix: The Colonies and Slavery in Eighteenth-Century French Literature Works Cited Index

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Book SynopsisExamines the complexities of life for African Americans in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley from the antebellum period through Reconstruction. Although the Valley was a site of fierce conflicts during the Civil War and its military activity has been extensively studied, scholars have largely ignored the Black experience in the region until now.

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Book SynopsisThe Jesuit Luis de Molina (1535-1600) discussed the legal and ethical aspects of the Portuguese trade in African and Asian enslaved persons. Molina surveys, develops, and problematizes the criteria necessary for the legitimate possession, sale, and purchase of human freedom.

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Book SynopsisReinterpreting the Haitian Revolution as both an islandwide and a circum-Caribbean phenomenon, Graham Nessler examines the intertwined histories of Saint-Domingue, the French colony that became Haiti, and Santo Domingo, the Spanish colony that became the Dominican Republic. Nessler argues that the territories' borders and governance were often unclear and mutually influential.

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Book SynopsisSales restrictions apply in some territories. Slavery helped finance the Industrial Revolution in England. Plantation owners, shipbuilders, and merchants connected with the slave trade accumulated vast fortunes that established banks and heavy industry. Eric Williams advanced these powerful ideas in Capitalism and Slavery, published in 1944.

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Book SynopsisAsks how we can better understand a politics of refusalWriting a new story of Black politics, Jump emerges from the practice of enslaved Africans jumping overboard off their slavers' ships. Reading against the narrative that depoliticizes and denigrates the leaps of the enslaved as merely suicidal symptoms of chattel slavery and the Middle Passage, Sam C. Tenorio demonstrates how bringing these jumps to bear on the foundations of Black politics allows us to rethink a politics of refusal.In a period of increasing political mobilization against police brutality and mass incarceration, Jump attends to the layers of confinement that constitute the racial and gendered hierarchies of the antiblack world. Centering radical acts too often relegated to the periphery of Black politics, Tenorio proposes a Black anarchist politics of refusal that helps us to think dissent anew.Tracing iterations of the jump through the carceral wake of the slave ship, Teno

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Book SynopsisIn Spaces of Enslavement, Andrea C. Mosterman addresses the persistent myth that the colonial Dutch system of slavery was more humane.Investigating practices of enslavement in New Netherland and then in New York, Mosterman shows that these ways of racialized spatial control held much in common with the southern plantation societies.In the 1620s, Dutch colonial settlers brought slavery to the banks of the Hudson River and founded communities from New Amsterdam in the south to Beverwijck near the terminus of the navigable river. When Dutch power in North America collapsed and the colony came under English control in 1664, Dutch descendants continued to rely on enslaved labor. Until 1827, when slavery was abolished in New York State, slavery expanded in the region, with all free New Yorkers benefitting from that servitude.Mosterman describes how the movements of enslaved persons were controlled in homes and in public spaces such as worksTable of ContentsIntroduction: A Spatial Analysis of Slavery in Dutch New York 1. Enslaved Labor and the Settling of New Netherland 2. The Geography of Enslaved Life in New Netherland 3. Control and Resistance in the Public Space 4. Enslavement and the Dual Nature of the Home 5. Slavery and Social Power in Dutch Reformed Churches Conclusion: A More Benign System of Slavery?

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Book SynopsisThis book represents the final instalment of research and analysis by one of the Caribbean's foremost historians. In this volume, Eric Williams reflects on the institution of slavery from the ancient period in Europe down to New World African Slavery. The book also includes other forms of bondage which followed slavery, including Japanese, Chinese, Indians and Pacific peoples in many locations worldwide. The book points ways in which this bondage led to European and American prosperity and the manner in which bonded peoples created their own spaces. This they did through the preservation and revival of the transported culture to the new locations. The book makes a significant contribution in that it moves beyond African slavery. It continues the narrative after abolition by showing how the capitalist impulse enabled Europe and the United States to devise other (non-slavery) ways of further exploitation of non-African people in third world countries. These nations fought this further exploitation in banding together to create the south-to-south nonaligned movement which gave mutual assistance in a number of areas. Most other works tend to separate these issues or deal with them on a regional basis. Eric Williams offers a comprehensive view, tying up many themes in a vast compendium.

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Book SynopsisPatterson discusses the internal dynamics of slavery in 66 societies over time. These include Greece and Rome, medieval Europe, China, Korea, the Islamic kingdoms, Africa, the Caribbean islands, and the American South. Slavery, he argues, is a single process of recruitment, incorporation on the margin of society, and eventual manumission or death.

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Book SynopsisHarvard has had a close relationship with slavery. This report details Black enslavement on campus, financial benefits the institution derived from slavery, the leading roles of Harvard faculty and graduates in eugenics, and centuries of discrimination at the university—as well as the resistance these activities inspired on campus and beyond.

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Book SynopsisAn essential, rigorous, and lively introduction to the beginnings of American law. How did American colonists transform British law into their own? What were the colonies' first legal institutions, and who served in them? And why did the early Americans develop a passion for litigation that continues to this day? In Law and People in Colonial America, Peter Charles Hoffer tells the story of early American law from its beginnings on the British mainland to its maturation during the crisis of the American Revolution. For the men and women of colonial America, Hoffer explains, law was a pervasive influence in everyday life. Because it was their law, the colonists continually adapted it to fit changing circumstances. They also developed a sense of legalism that influenced virtually all social, economic, and political relationships. This sense of intimacy with the law, Hoffer argues, assumed a transforming power in times of crisis. In the midst of a war for independence, American revolutiTable of ContentsPreface to the Second Edition Preface to the Revised EditionPreface to the First EditionAcknowledgmentsChapter One. "That the Said Statutes, Lawes, and Ordinances May Be as Neere as Conveniently May, Agreeable to the Forme of the Lawes and Pollicy of England"Chapter Two. "And to the End that All Laws Prepared by the Governour and Provincial Council Aforesaid, May Yet Have the More Full Concurrence of the Free-Men of the Province"Chapter Three. "If I Am Become Their Son, They Must Act the Part of a Father"Chapter Four. "Take All the Care in Your Power to Guard against Any Further Wicked Designs"Chapter Five. "These Dirty and Ridiculous Litigations Have Been Multiplied in This Town, Till the Very Earth Groans and the Stones Cry Out"Chapter Six. "Just so th' Unletter'd Blockheads of the Robe; (Than Whom no Greater Monsters on the Globe); Their Wire-Drawn, Incoherent, Jargon Spin, Or Lug a Point by Head and Shoulders In"Chapter Seven. "On What Principles, Then, on What Motives of Action, Can We Depend for the Security of our Liberties, of our Properties . . . of Life Itself?"ConclusionNotesA Bibliographic EssayIndex

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Book SynopsisDavid Bristow offers spellbinding stories of some amazing, little-known characters from South Africa, past and very past, including the giant Trekboer Coenraad de Buys - rebel, renegade, a man with a price on his head who married many women and fathered a small nation.

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Book SynopsisDemonstrates how landscape features such as waterways, iron forges, and caves played a key role in the conduct and effectiveness of the Underground Railroad.Trade Review"In this book Cheryl Janifer LaRoche provides a corrective to this gap in the history by taking a broader landscape approach to 'geographies of resistance,' and she also traces in understated terms but powerful examples the silencing of the same history."--The Journal of American History "LaRoche deserves praise for her effort to situate free blacks firmly at the center of the scholarship on the Underground Railroad. She also makes contribution to that body of literature."--Civil War Book Review "This important addition to the scholarship on the Underground Railroad focuses on the role of free black communities. . . . Utilizing archaeology, previously untapped written sources, and oral history, the author makes a convincing argument for including black communities in the narrative about the Underground Railroad. Highly recommended."--Choice"The Geography of Resistance is carefully researched, tightly organized, and written from the heart. . . . LaRoche recognizes the natural environment as an agent of history, and she deftly weaves the landscape into each story. The book demonstrates the level of scholarship that is now possible thanks to research conducted in recent decades by federal archaeologists and by African American historical organizations, and the work that has been encouraged and guided by the National Park Service."--Annals of Iowa"An exemplary model of nuanced, interdisciplinary scholarship."--Register of the Kentucky Historical Society"By considering the land itself a ‘geography of resistance’ and using an interdisciplinary approach, LaRoche pushes the boundaries of traditional scholarship. LaRoche marshals significant historical evidence to connect black churches and the Underground Railroad. Quite notable indeed."--The Journal of Southern History"Of interest to lay readers and scholars alike. Anyone fascinated by the Underground Railroad and black resistance more broadly will profit from this volume."--Kansas History: A Journal of the Central Plains"The Geography of Resistance is carefully researched, tightly organized, and written from the heart.--The Annals of Iowa "LaRoche's well-written and carefully researched study provides new insight into the history of the Underground Railroad and will serve as an indispensable resource for anyone who is interested in the study of early nineteenth-century America."--The Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society "LaRoche's work contributes to a more complete understanding of the relationship between free black communities, the black church, and the Underground Railroad."--American Historical Review "Well researched and well written. . . . The Geography of Resistance: Free Black Communities and the Underground Railroad adds valuable new insights into the story of the migration of African Americans. It broadens the knowledge of a people who were fugitives in their own country, and it will allow future researchers to uncover other places of refuge for these African Americans."--Northern Terminus: The African Canadian History Journal "Employing the tools of archeology, LaRoche's study provides a powerful new window into the Underground Railroad and significantly enriches our understanding of it. She helps rescue some of the crucial Underground Railroad lore that scholars have been attempting to substantiate or refute for more than a century."--Keith Griffler, author of Front Line of Freedom: African Americans and the Forging of the Underground Railroad in the Ohio Valley

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Book SynopsisTraces the Caribbean from its pre-Columbian state through European contact and colonialism to the rise of US hegemony and the economic turbulence of the twenty-first century. This volume begins with a discussion of the region's diverse geography and challenging ecology and features an in-depth look at the transatlantic slave trade.

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Book SynopsisThe proud Republic of Liberia was founded in the 19th century with the triumphant return of the freed slaves from America to Africa.The proud Republic of Liberia was founded in the 19th century with the triumphant return of the freed slaves from America to Africa. Once back ‘home’, however, these Americo-Liberians had to integrate with the resident tribes – who did not want or welcome them. Against a background of French and British colonialists busily carving up Mother Africa, while local tribes were still unashamedly trading in slaves . . . the vulnerable newcomers felt trapped and out of place. Where men should have stood shoulder to shoulder, they turned on each other instead.Land of My Fathers plunges us into this world. But in the midst of turmoil, there is friendship. Edward Richard, a man born into slavery and a preacher by profession, is convinced that the future of Liberia lies in bringing peace amongst the tribes. His mission takes him to the far north, where he meets an extraordinary man, Halay. Edward’s new and dearest friend is ready to sacrifice his own life to protect his country; for the Liberians believe that with Halay’s death, no war will ever threaten their land. A century later, this belief is crushed when war engulfs the land, bearing away with it the descendants of both Edward and Halay. The story of Halay is the untold story of Liberia. What he did would come to stand as symbol of man's ability to defy the odds, to face the inevitable head on.Trade Review'What an achievement,' Moses Isegawa, (The Abbysinian Chronicles); 'A work rooted in the slave narrative tradition of Alex Haley's Roots. Not a word more, not a word less. A taut, controlled narrative,' (Standard Der Letteren); 'Well written, lyrical story for the general public,' (The Association of Dutch libraries); 'A roman into which you would gladly crawl,' (The Groene Amsterdammer); 'Sherif creates unity between two worlds. It's a novel that is valid,' (Johan Diepstraten, author) i

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Book SynopsisTrade ReviewIra Berlin ranks as one of the greatest living historians of slavery in the United States… The Long Emancipation offers a useful reminder that abolition was not the charitable work of respectable white people, or not mainly that. Instead, the demise of slavery was made possible by the constant discomfort inflicted on middle-class white society by black activists. And like the participants in today’s Black Lives Matter movement, Berlin has not forgotten that the history of slavery in the United States—especially the history of how slavery ended—is never far away when contemporary Americans debate whether their nation needs to change. -- Edward E. Baptist * New York Times Book Review *The cause of the end of slavery in the U.S. is a long, complex story that is usually, in the general reading public’s mind, simplified by ‘the Civil War ended it.’ In this remarkably cogent, impressively thought-out, and even beautifully styled account by a university historian, we are given emphatic witness to his long-held professional conviction that ‘freedom’s arrival,’ as he phrases it, was not due to a ‘moment or a man’ but because of a process that took a century to unfold. -- Brad Hooper * Booklist (starred review) *A short, fast-paced interpretive history of the transition of African Americans from chattels to free persons. [Berlin] challenges previous scholars who identify both a ‘moment’ and a human factor that sparked emancipation—generally either President Abraham Lincoln or the South’s slaves—for initiating slavery’s overthrow. Instead, Berlin takes the long view in charting emancipation’s circuitous metamorphosis, from the late 18th century until the 1860s… In the end, Berlin credits black persons, north and south, for gradually but forcefully removing slavery’s stain from the fabric of American life. -- J. D. Smith * Choice *Berlin lucidly illuminates the ‘near-century-long’ process of abolition and how, in many ways, the work of emancipation continues today. * Publishers Weekly *

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Book SynopsisThe story of the longest and most complex legal challenge to slavery in American historyTrade Review"William Thomas casts a bright light into the period’s darkness. . . . He reveals a remarkable struggle for freedom, one buoyed at first by new aspirations in the broader culture and later doomed by rekindled fears. . . . Valuable and provocative. . . . Mr. Thomas brings a clear and sensitive eye to the tangled relationship of black and white Americans in the early 19th century."—Fergus Bordewich, Wall Street Journal"Gripping. . . . Profound and prodigiously researched."—Alison L. LaCroix, Washington PostSelected as a finalist for the 2021 PROSE Awards, sponsored by the Association of American PublishersFinalist for the George Washington Book Award, sponsored by the Gilder Lehrman Center and Washington CollegeWinner of the SHEAR Best Book Prize, sponsored by The Society for Historians of the Early American Republic Winner of the 2021 Nebraska Book Award, Nonfiction Legal History category, sponsored by Nebraska Center for the BookCHOICE Outstanding Academic Titles 2021“Here is a strikingly original, eloquent, and humane book on an inhumane institution. The story restores the names and histories of people who fought for freedom for generations.”—Edward Ayers, author of The Thin Light of Freedom: The Civil War and Emancipation in the Heart of America“In A Question of Freedom, historian William Thomas brings to light the truly remarkable and largely forgotten efforts of people held in bondage to sue for their freedom in the courts of the early United States. A genuine contribution to the social, legal, and political history of American slavery, this is a book of great depth and insight.”—Adam Rothman, historian and curator of the Georgetown Slavery Archive“With its vivid narration, revelatory research, careful contextualization, and bracing honesty, A Question of Freedom demonstrates that freedom suits were not isolated episodes but instead a major form of slave resistance, with far-reaching and ongoing effects in the long freedom struggle. This book is essential reading for understanding the history of slavery and the modern debate over reparations.”—Elizabeth R. Varon, author of Armies of Deliverance: A New History of the Civil War"William Thomas has produced an important and astonishing chronicle of the legal battles waged by enslaved people for their own freedom. Braiding white-knuckle courtroom drama together with a searing exploration of his own family history, he redefines slavery’s place in early American law—not an inherent feature, but a dubious institution whose contradictions were exploited by the enslaved to protect themselves and their families.”—Yoni Appelbaum, Senior Editor, The Atlantic"A Question of Freedom is an essential book that details the extraordinary efforts of enslaved people to challenge both the legitimacy and absoluteness of slavery in courts of law. It is a work of remarkable honesty and humanity that should inform any conversation on the legacy of slavery. Please read it."—Lauret Savoy, author of Trace: Memory, History, Race, and the America Landscape

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Book SynopsisEnslaved West Indian women had few opportunities to record their stories for posterity. Yet from their dusty footprints and the umpteen small clues they left for us to unravel, there's no question that they earned their place in history. Pick any Caribbean island and you'll find race, skin colour and rank interacting with gender in a unique and often volatile way. In A Kick in the Belly, Stella Dadzie follows the evidence, and finds women played a distinctly female role in the development of a culture of slave resistance - a role that was not just central, but downright dynamic.From the coffle-line to the Great House, enslaved women found ways of fighting back that beggar belief. Whether responding to the horrendous conditions of plantation life, the sadistic vagaries of their captors or the 'peculiar burdens of their sex', their collective sanity relied on a highly subversive adaptation of the values and cultures they smuggled with them naked from different parts of Africa. By sustaining or adapting remembered cultural practices, they ensured that the lives of chattel slaves retained both meaning and purpose. A Kick in the Belly makes clear that their subtle acts of insubordination and their conscious acts of rebellion came to undermine the very fabric and survival of West Indian slavery.Trade Reviewreview for Heart of the Race: A feminist classic -- Bernardine Evaristo * Times Literary Supplement *review for Heart of the Race: As relevant as ever . Heart of the Race gives a huge amount of insight into black women's agency and activism in British history. * Institute of Race Relations *review for Heart of the Race: Vivid * National Geographic Traveller *In clear, accessible prose, this book upturns versions of the past that privilege his-story, revealing a more complex and many-layered past, one in which enslaved women were central to the struggle for freedom. -- Suzanne Scafe, co-author of The Heart of the RaceShocking, enlightening, fascinating, challenging, A Kick in the Belly reframes the overwhelmingly male perspective on the transatlantic slave trade through female experiences and acts of resistance. It is a essential corrective to centuries of sublimation and the presentation of black women who lived through this history as passive victims. I cannot recommend it highly enough. -- Bernardine Evaristo, author of Girl, Woman, OtherStella Dadzie has given us another chapter in women's history by uncovering resistance that is uniquely rooted in controlling reproduction. This is a meticulously researched narrative that privileges the people who were so brutally treated that it was easy to assume they had no agency. We now know that such an assumption would be mistaken. This is an essential addition to the corpus of historical study into the nature, legacy and impacts of the period of African enslavement. It's finally a work that allows us to better understand and recognise how women disrupted the principal economic principles supporting the enslavement of generations of people. -- Arike Oke, Director of The Black Cultural ArchivesWhat has become distinctive of Dadzie's scholarship is the way she centres black women in their own stories and this continues in A Kick in the Belly...After being fed narratives that 'the material doesn't exist', A Kick in the Belly shows that it is really a matter of knowing where to look and how to listen. -- Sarah Lusack * Black Ballad *Amplifies and honours the innovative ways women fought for freedom and kept their cultures alive despite the brutality they faced...When filmmaker Ava DuVernay says she is her ancestor's wildest dreams, these are the women she's talking about. -- Sharmaine Lovegrove * Red *Highlighting the experiences of enslaved women in the Anglo-Caribbean, Dadzie gives primacy, as she did in her seminal book Heart of the Race (with Beverley Bryan and Suzanne Scafe), to Black women's voices. In doing so, she puts a narrative of empowerment and hope at the centre of the brutal history of slavery. -- Meleisa Ono-George * Times Literary Supplement *Transatlantic slavery is one of the most misunderstood and misrepresented periods of history. Stella Dadzie offers a much-needed corrective by centring on the experiences of black women forced into the plantation system. -- Kehinde Andrews * BBC History Magazine: Books of the Year 2020 *Over 200 or so pages of impassioned prose, [Dadzie] delves into the many stories of female freedom fighters, from Jamaica's Queen Nanny of the Maroons, who used guerrilla warfare against the British, to those who murdered their masters with poisoned draughts like Baby of St Kitts, or became runaways like Betty, Charlotte and Molly who took flight as a trio from their Barbados plantation. -- Angela Cobbinah * Camden New Journal *

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Book SynopsisNAMED A TOP BOOK OF 2024 BY AMAZON AND WASHINGTON POSTThe Survivors of the Clotilda, a comprehensive account of one of the most important parts of American history, is a triumph.?Booklist (starred review)A welcome history of defiance and survival.?Kirkus ReviewsJoining the ranks of Rebecca Skloot?s The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks and Zora Neale Hurston?s rediscovered classic Barracoon, an immersive and revelatory history of the Clotilda, the last slave ship to land on US soil, told through the stories of its survivors?the last documented survivors of any slave ship?whose lives diverged and intersected in profound ways.The Clotilda, the last slave ship to land on American soil, docked in Mobile Bay, Alabama, in July 1860?more than half a century after the passage of a federal law banning the importation of captive Africans, and nine months before the beginning of the Civil War. The last of its survivors lived well into the twentieth century. They were the last witnesses to the final act of a terrible and significant period in world history.In this epic work, Dr. Hannah Durkin tells the stories of the Clotilda?s 110 captives, drawing on her intensive archival, historical, and sociological research. The Survivors of the Clotilda follows their lives from their kidnappings in what is modern-day Nigeria through a terrifying 45-day journey across the Middle Passage; from the subsequent sale of the ship?s 103 surviving children and young people into slavery across Alabama to the dawn of the Civil Rights movement in Selma; from the foundation of an all-Black African Town (later Africatown) in Northern Mobile?an inspiration for writers of the Harlem Renaissance, including Zora Neale Hurston?to the foundation of the quilting community of Gee?s Bend?a Black artistic circle whose cultural influence remains enormous.An astonishing, deeply compelling tapestry of history, biography, and social commentary, The Survivors of the Clotilda is a tour de force that deepens our knowledge and understanding of the Black experience and of America and its tragic past.The Survivors of the Clotilda includes 30 artworks and photographs.

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Book SynopsisAfter Britain’s Abolition of the Slave Trade Act of 1807, a squadron of Royal Navy vessels was sent to the West Coast of Africa tasked with suppressing the thriving transatlantic slave trade. Drawing on previously unpublished papers found in private collections and various archives in the UK and abroad, this book examines the personal and cultural experiences of the naval officers at the frontline of Britain’s anti-slavery campaign in West Africa. It explores their unique roles in this 60-year operation: at sea, boarding slave ships bound for the Americas and ‘liberating’ captive Africans; on shore, as Britain resolved to ‘improve’ West African societies; and in the metropolitan debates around slavery and abolitionism in Britain. Their personal narratives are revealing of everyday concerns of health, rewards and strategy, to more profound questions of national honour, cultural encounters, responsibility for the lives of others in the most distressing of circumstances, and the true meaning of ‘freedom’ for formerly enslaved African peoples. British anti-slavery efforts and imperial agendas were tightly bound in the nineteenth century, inseparable from ideas of national identity. This is a book about individuals tasked with extraordinary service, military men who also worked as guardians, negotiators, and envoys of abolition.Trade Review'Based on meticulous research in national and regional archive collections, this book provides a richly documented account of how men engaged in Royal Navy suppression activities reacted to their work in intercepting vessels carrying enslaved Africans.'Professor Suzanne Schwarz, University of Worcester‘[Envoys of Abolition] offer[s] a detailed exploration of British officers and their important role in the suppression of the slave trade… This well-researched and nuanced discussion of naval officers illustrates their complex roles in West Africa as well as their powerful impact on metropolitan discourses.’ Evan C. Rothera, The Northern Mariner Table of ContentsList of Illustrations List of Abbreviations Acknowledgements Introduction Chapter 1: Abolition at sea Chapter 2: Abolition on shore Chapter 3: Officers’ commitment to the anti-slavery cause Chapter 4: Prize voyages and ideas of freedom Chapter 5: Encounters with Africa Chapter 6: Officers’ contributions to Britain’s anti-slavery culture Conclusion Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisA highly original history of American portraiture that places the experiences of enslaved people at its centerTrade Review2024 Charles Rufus Morey Book Prize Shortlist, sponsored by CAA“A model of method, an investigative tour de force that fluidly mixes laborious archival research and time-honored art historical savvy.”—Paul Staiti, author of Of Arms and Artists: The American Revolution through Painters’ Eyes“Jennifer Van Horn accomplishes something that others have hardly imagined, relating a story of African American participation in and resistance to Euro-American visual culture throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.”—Susan Rather, author of The American School: Artists and Status in the Late Colonial and Early National Era“In this groundbreaking study, Jennifer Van Horn rightly defines production, viewing, representation, preservation, and destruction as acts of subversion that expand our understanding both of the lives of the enslaved and the multivalent ways in which early American portraiture functioned.”—Steven Nelson, Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, National Gallery of Art

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Book SynopsisThe first book-length study of household servants and slaves, exploring a visual history over 400 years and four continentsTrade Review“The topic is an absorbing one and leaves the reader wanting to know more. . . . Complexities of definition and categorisation are apparent, which the author fully acknowledges.”—Tabitha Barber, Art Newspaper“Wolfthal charts some changes over the period and draws on examples from across Europe. Having made the point that servants are largely invisible and always inferior, she looks for exceptions to the general rule.”—Norma Clarke, Literary Review

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Book SynopsisDuring the first generations of European settlement in North America, a number of interconnected Northeastern families carved out private empires. In Bound by Bondage, Nicole Saffold Maskiell argues that slavery was a crucial component to the rise and enduring influence of this emergent aristocracy. Dynastic families built prestige based on shared notions of mastery, establishing sprawling manorial estates and securing cross-colonial landholdings and trading networks that stretched from the Northeast to the South, the Caribbean, and beyond. The members of this elite class were mayors, governors, senators, judges, and presidents, and they were also some of the largest slaveholders in the North. Aspirations to power and status, grounded in the political economy of human servitude, ameliorated ethnic and religious rivalries, and united once antagonistic Anglo and Dutch families, ensuring that Dutch networks endured throughout the English and then Revolutionary periods.Table of ContentsIntroduction: Manhunt 1. Neger: Race, Slavery, and Status in the Dutch Northeast (1640s–60s) 2. Kolonist: Slaveholding and the Survival of Expansive Anglo-Dutch Elite Networks (1650s–90s) 3. Naam: Race, Family, and Connection on the Borderlands (1680s–90s) 4. Bond: Forging an Anglo-Dutch Slaveholding Northeast (1690s–1710s) 5. Family: Kinship, Ambition, and Fear in a Time of Rebellions (1710s–20s) 6. Market: Creating Kinship-Based Empires United by Slaveholding (1730s–50s) 7. Identity: Navigating Racial Expectations to Escape Slavery (1750s–60s) Conclusion: Gentry

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Book SynopsisLONGLISTED FOR THE BAILLIE GIFFORD PRIZE'Alex Renton has done Britain a favour and written a brutally honest book about his family's involvement with slavery. Blood Legacy could change our frequently defensive national conversation about slavery/race' Sathnam Sanghera'Utterly gripped - An incredible book. Alex's work is my book in practice' Emma DabiriThrough the story of his own family's history as slave and plantation owners, Alex Renton looks at how we owe it to the present to understand the legacy of the past. When British Caribbean slavery was abolished across most of the British Empire in 1833, it was not the newly liberated who received compensation, but the tens of thousands of enslavers who were paid millions of pounds in government money. The descendants of some of those slave owners are among the wealthiest and most powerful people in Britain today.A group of Caribbean countries is calling on ten European nations to discuss the payment of trillions of dollars for the damage done by transatlantic slavery and its continuing legacy. Meanwhile, Black Lives Matter and other activist groups are causing increasing numbers of white people to reflect on how this history of abuse and exploitation has benefited them.Blood Legacy explores what inheritance - political, economic, moral and spiritual - has been passed to the descendants of the slave owners and the descendants of the enslaved. He also asks, crucially, how the former - himself among them - can begin to make reparations for the past.Trade ReviewA courageous, deeply affecting and excoriatingly honest account of his family's role in enslavement -- PHILIPPE SANDS * * Financial Times * *Renton . . . dismantles the myths with the efficiency of someone shelling pistachios for a snack . . . remarkable . . . an incredible work of scholarship -- SATHNAM SANGHERA * * The Times * *An important book . . . one of the strengths of Renton's book is that it takes seriously the issue of class . . . In breaking class ranks, Renton has given voice to a long suppressed truth . . . [an] admirable book * * Observer * *In this unflinching, fascinating and very human account, drawn from his own family papers, Alex Renton takes a crucial first step towards reparation, by acknowledging the cruel reality of his ancestors' callous exploitation of enslaved people's labour from afar; detailing the damage done, and both asking and beginning to answer the question of what can be done to purge these sins and their legacies today -- MIRANDA KAUFMANN, author of Black TudorsBlood Legacy is a moving, timely, well-written and strikingly thoughtful book that makes an important contribution to the growing debate on the horrors that accompanied Britain's empire-building. Alex Renton's forensic and remarkably honest analysis of his own family papers, and the profound darkness they contain, highlights our continuing failure to acknowledge the extreme toxicity of so much of our Imperial history -- WILLIAM DALRYMPLEUtterly gripped - an incredible book. Alex's work is my book in practice -- EMMA DABIRIA deeply moving, brave and powerful book -- ANDREW MARRMoving and deeply researched, Alex Renton's account of his ancestors' slaveholding brings home the everyday brutality of Caribbean slavery and its contribution to the making of Britain both then and since. Blood Legacy sets the ordinariness of slaveholding in the eighteenth-century monied world alongside accounts of the extraordinary lives of those they owned. This is a book that asks white Britons to look hard at our past and its consequences in the present -- PROFESSOR DIANA PATONA fascinating family history of profit and loss made during slavery in the Caribbean. This book is truth not fiction -- PROFESSOR SIR GEOFF PALMERA useful counter to British self-congratulation on the ending of the Atlantic slave trade . . . It must make any reader question much of the received wisdom about the eighteenth-century Enlightenment -- ANDREW MARR * * Sunday Times * *

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Book SynopsisThe first history of black slavery in the Maritimes, North to Bondage is a startling corrective to the enduring myth of Canada as a land of freedom at the end of the Underground Railroad.Trade ReviewNorth to Bondage provides a powerful interruption of the historical silencing of slavery in Canada, detailing the complex origins and intricate social relationships that formed the basis of slavery in the Maritimes. The book thus functions as an important corrective to Canadian narratives of slavery that have functioned largely to erase black presence and suffering in Canada by encouraging a belief that slavery was either non-existent, benevolent, or economically unimportant. * Canadian Literature *...North to Bondage is an important work that will become the standard text for understanding Maritime slavery...it not only challenges scholars of early Canada to think about the place and role of slavery but also Canada’s understanding of its national identity. For that reason, it has a place in many different classrooms, including courses on early Canadian history, multiculturalism in Canada, and Atlantic slavery. -- Jared Hardesty, Western Washington University * American Review of Canadian Studies, Vol. 46 No. 4, February 2017 *Whitfield’s book places the experiences of enslaved persons at the centre of this history. This is skilfully done given that there are few sources that contain the unmediated voices of enslaved people in Atlantic Canada …[Whitfield] achieves this by combining archival material and histories of slavery in what became the United States and Canada. He demonstrates that enslaved persons negotiated their experiences of enslavement and he shows that they were integral to bringing about the demise of slavery in the early nineteenth century. -- Eleanor Bird, The University of Sheffield * British Journal of Canadian Studies *Whitfield’s important and very readable study reinserts Maritimes slavery and black labour into the narrative of Canada’s many beginnings while also keeping the relevant black Atlantic connections in full view. -- Winfried Siemerling, University of Waterloo * Left History *Whitfield presents a new avenue for understanding the complexities of slavery in Maritime Canada and opens the door for future research. Rather than expanding on traditional research that stresses the freedoms found by enslaved or escaped African-Americans, Whitfield complicates the narratives and creates a more encompassing image of life in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries ... North to Freedom will be a welcomed addition to courses in both Canadian and American history, especially those looking to bring in new perspectives that challenge the history of slavery. -- Amy Mitchell-Cook, University of West Florida * Canadian Journal of History *North to Bondage is a significant contribution to several subfields of historical research, including African diasporic studies, the history of slavery, early American history, and early Canadian history. At just 118 pages of text and written in accessible prose, it is also very readable and ideally suited for the classroom. -- Christopher C. Jones, Brigham Young University * Early Canadian History *Amani Whitfield provides a nuanced and remarkably fulsome picture of the lives of enslaved people in the Maritimes by drawing on runaway advertisements, court documents, and personal papers. * Immigrants & Minorities *Table of ContentsIntroduction: Slavery in the Maritime Colonies1 Slavery and the American Context2 Maritime Slavery and Loyalist Settlement3 Slave Work4 The World of Maritime Slaves and Slaveholders5 Ending SlaveryConclusion: Legacies of SlaveryAppendix A: Possible Slave NumbersAppendix B: Slave ProfilesNotesBibliographic Essay

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Book SynopsisIn the aftermath of the Civil War, thousands of former slaves made their way from the South to the Kansas plains. Called ‘Exodusters’, they were searching for their own promised land. Bryan Jack now tells the story of this American exodus as it played out in St. Louis, a key stop in the journey west.Trade ReviewJack does an excellent job of outlining one of the most important events in American history."" - The North Carolina Historical Review

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Book SynopsisA riveting and illuminating exploration of the transatlantic slave trade by an intrepid team of divers seeking to reclaim the stories of their ancestors. “For me, Enslaved is an attempt to give a voice to the millions whose voices were silenced.”—Samuel L. Jackson, human rights activist and Hollywood iconFrom the writers behind the acclaimed documentary series Enslaved (starring Samuel L. Jackson), comes a rich and revealing narrative of the true global and human scope of the transatlantic slave trade. The trade existed for 400 years, during which 12 million people were trafficked, and 2 million would die en route. In these pages we meet the remarkable group, Diving with a Purpose (DWP), as they dive sunken slave ships all around the world. They search for remains and artifacts testifying to the millions of kidnapped Africans that were transported to Europe, the Americas, and the Caribbean. From manilla bracelets to shackles, cargo, and other possessions, the finds from these wrecks bring the stories of lost lives back to the surface. As we follow the men and women of DWP across eleven countries, Jacobovici and Kingsley’s rich research puts the archaeology and history of these wrecks that lost between 1670 to 1858 in vivid context. From the ports of Gold Coast Africa, to the corporate hubs of trading companies of England, Portugal and the Netherlands, and the final destinations in the New World, Jacobovici and Kingsley show how the slave trade touched every nation and every society on earth. Though global in scope, Enslaved makes history personal as we experience the divers’ sadness, anger, reverence, and awe as they hold tangible pieces of their ancestors’ world in their hands. What those people suffered on board those ships can never be forgiven. Enslaved works to ensure that it will always be remembered and understood, and is the first book to tell the story of the transatlantic slave trade from the bottom of the sea.Trade Review“A very important book. Through shipwrecks and the investigations of a small group of underwater explorers, Jacobovici and Kingsley tell the story of slavery in monstrous, unflinching detail. It's a story that needs to be told and Jacobovici (a brilliant storyteller) and Kingsley (a master maritime archaeologist) give it to us point-blank. It's more than a book; it's a message never to be forgotten.” * Mensun Bound, director of exploration for the Endurance22 expedition, and author of The Ship Beneath the Ice: The Discovery of Shackleton's Endurance *“For me, Enslaved is an attempt to give a voice to the millions whose voices were silenced.” -- Samuel L. Jackson, human rights activist and Hollywood icon“A vast history has been submerged on the ocean floor for centuries. With Diving With A Purpose, Kingsley and Jacobovici share the stories of these people once viewed as cargo so that they will live on with dignity. Enslaved explores the global impact of slavery by investigating the ships carrying those that were enslaved as well as by digging into the history of port towns and the complexity of the illegal slave trade. A necessary, poignant work.” * Booklist *“An informative account. Enslaved spotlights Diving with a Purpose, a group of scuba divers who located the Leusden, a Dutch slaver whose 1738 sinking off the coast of Suriname killed 664 enslaved Africans, and the schooner Home, an Underground Railroad “freedom boat” that sank in Lake Michigan in 1858, among other wrecks. The authors present a wealth of information and effectively commemorate the two million captured Africans who died en route to Europe and the New World. Readers will be horrified and enlightened.” * Publishers Weekly *"Enslaved illuminates the horrors of slavery in a compelling new way. Built around the recovery of slavery's material artifacts, this book offers powerful reminders of our proximity to the past, of the scars slavery has left on our present, and of the struggles of oppressed people seeking to build new futures." -- Christopher Bonner, author of Remaking the Republic: Black Politics and the Creation of American Citizenship“The spirt and souls of the enslaved peoples buried on the ocean floor and in other unlikely graveyards have not been silenced forever. This book enables descendants of enslaved Africans to better understand who they are and where they have come from.” -- Dr. Wilhelmina J. Donkoh, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Kumasi, GhanaPraise for Simcha Jacobovici: "Absolutely fascinating. Many would argue the biggest story or one of the biggest stories of our lifetime.” * NBC's TODAY *"Jacobovici is a maverick, a self-made Indiana Jones." * Newsweek *Praise for Sean Kingsley: "Kingsley's bracing tale of religious intrigue grips the imagination." * Publisher's Weekly *"Readers will find that the thrill of tracing long-buried clues to those tantalizing locked gates is itself a great prize." * Booklist *

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Book Synopsis'More than lives up to the hype' Observer'Set to become a publishing sensation' Kirsty Lang, BBC Front Row'An astounding achievement' Sunday Times'The lost giant of American literature' New YorkerJune, 1957. One afternoon, in the backwater town of Sutton, a young black farmer by the name of Tucker Caliban matter-of-factly throws salt on his field, shoots his horse and livestock, sets fire to his house and departs the southern state. And thereafter, the entire African-American population leave with him.The reaction that follows is told across a dozen chapters, each from the perspective of a different white townsperson. These are boys, girls, men and women; either liberal or conservative, bigoted or sympathetic - yet all of whom are grappling with this spontaneous, collective rejection of subordination.In 1962, aged just 24, William Melvin Kelley's debut novel A Different Drummer earned him critical comparisons to James Baldwin and William Faulkner. Fifty-five years later, author and journalist Kathryn Schulz happened upon the novel serendipitously and was inspired to write the New Yorker article 'The Lost Giant of American Literature', included as a foreword to this edition.Trade ReviewEvery so often, a 'forgotten classic' is rediscovered around which the literary world rallies with praise and prediction of a 'Stoner effect' . . . A Different Drummer more than lives up to the hype, both in terms of its literary accomplishment and in the power of its political vision . . . Today the book offers us an unflinching study of the southern white American psyche at the cusp of the civil rights movement: its belligerence against change, the incomprehension and anger. It is woeful to think that almost 60 years later, Kelley's story seems just as timely and as urgent, but what a gift to literature that we have rediscovered it. -- Arifa Akbar * Observer *Simple, timeless, mythic . . . an astounding achievement . . . still relevant and powerful today. * Sunday Times *Set to become a publishing sensation. -- Kirsty Lang * BBC Front Row *Black America's lost literary masterpiece. * Observer *Astounding . . . Absolutely essential reading. * Stylist *This fierce and brilliant novel is written with sympathy as well as sorrow. It's a myth packed with real-world resonance. * Guardian *Wonderful . . . full of dazzling moments of social and psychological observation that jump from the page as if they were written yesterday. * Metro *A Different Drummer is a revelation. A story so vividly alive I closed the book a different person from the one who opened it. A vital classic of literature. -- Polly Clark, author of LarchfieldBrilliant . . . The rare first novel that makes future ones seem both inevitable and exciting. * New Yorker *Despite the novel being over 50 years old it feels as relevant as ever, sitting alongside the likes of The Good Immigrant, Slay in Your Lane and Becoming. -- Alexandra Heminsley * Grazia *Kelley blended fantasy and fact to construct an alternative world whose sweep and complexity drew comparisons to James Joyce and William Faulkner. * New York Times *This first novel just perhaps could play a part in changing our history. * Kansas City Star *[A] masterpiece . . . Kelley wrote intricate novels that identified with the rejection of dominant social orders. * Public Books *An exceptionally powerful and elegant first novel. * Manchester Guardian *Superbly written . . . a stunning work. * Kirkus *A rare first novel: dynamic, imaginative, and accomplished . . . It is a custom to say of first novels that they 'show promise.' But we need not say that of this one. It shows accomplishment; it shows fulfillment. * Chicago Sunday Tribune *So brilliant is this initial novel that one must consider Mr. Kelley for tentative future placement among the paragons of American letters. * Boston Sunday Herald *Beautifully written and thought-provoking . . . It will strike a responsive chord in all men of goodwill. * Baltimore Evening Sun *Superb . . . The comparisons of his debut to the books of James Baldwin and Faulkner are justified. * Irish Times *

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Book SynopsisAn important book of epic scope on America's first racially integrated, religiously-inspired political movement for changeThe Underground Railroad, a movement peopled by daring heroes and heroines, and everyday folk For most, the mention of the Underground Railroad evokes images of hidden tunnels, midnight rides, and hairsbreadth escapes. Yet the Underground Railroad's epic story is much more morally complex and politically divisive than even the myths suggest. Against a backdrop of the country's westward expansion,which brought together Easterners who had engaged in slavery primarily in the abstract alongside slaveholding Southerners and their slaves, arose a clash of values that evolved into a fierce fight for nothing less than the country's soul. Beginning six decades before the Civil War, freedom-seeking blacks and pious whites worked together to save tens of thousands of lives, often at the risk of great physical danger to themselves. Not since the American Revolution

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Book SynopsisAfter moonrise on the cold night of January 21, 1897, a mob of twenty five white men gathered in a patch of woods near Big Road in southwestern Simpson County, Kentucky. Half carried rifles and shotguns, and a few tucked pistols in their pants. Their target? George Dinning, a freed slave who''d farmed peacefully in the area for 14 years, and had been wrongfully accused of stealing livestock from a neighboring farm. When the mob began firing through the doors and windows of Dinning''s house, he fired back in self-defense, shooting and killing the son of a wealthy Kentucky family.So began one of the strangest legal episodes in American history -- one that ended with Dinning becoming the first black man in America to win damages after a wrongful murder conviction.Drawing on a wealth of never-before-published material, bestselling author Ben Montgomery resurrects this dramatic and largely forgotten story, and the unusual convergence of characters -- among them a Confeder

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Book SynopsisAs runaway slaves fled from the South to escape bondage, slave catchers followed in their wake. The arrival of fugitives and slave catchers in the North set off violent confrontations that left participants and local residents enraged and embittered. Historian Robert H. Churchill places the Underground Railroad in the context of a geography of violence, a shifting landscape in which clashing norms of violence shaped the activities of slave catchers and the fugitives and abolitionists who defied them. Churchill maps four distinct cultures of violence: one that prevailed in the South and three more in separate regions of the North: the Borderland, the Contested Region, and the Free Soil Region. Slave catchers who followed fugitives into the North brought with them a Southern culture of violence that sanctioned white brutality as a means of enforcing racial hierarchy and upholding masculine honor, but their arrival triggered vastly different violent reactions in the three regions of the North. Underground activists adapted their operations to these distinct cultures of violence, and the cultural collisions between slave catchers and local communities transformed Northern attitudes, contributing to the collapse of the Fugitive Slave Act and the coming of the Civil War.Trade Review'Churchill's portrayal of the ways in which the distinctively Southern culture of violence alienated Northern communities subject to invasion by slave catchers is exceptionally acute. Churchill has made a lasting contribution to the history of the complex phenomenon that was the Underground Railroad, the nation's first civil rights movement.' Fergus Bordewich, author of Bound for Canaan: The Underground Railroad and the War for the Soul of America'Original, thoroughly and comprehensively researched, well written, and tightly argued.' Steven Lubet, author of The 'Colored Hero' of Harpers Ferry'A significant contribution to the literature on the Underground Railroad.' Graham Hodges, George Dorland Langdon, Jr Professor of History and Africana and Latin American Studies, Colgate University, New York'Using court records, print media, and memoirs, Churchill depicts the pervasive nature of the violence that defined the relationship between fugitive slaves, bounty hunters, abolitionists, and the great many Northerners who wished no association with the culture of slavery.' S. L. Smith, Choice'Considered together with the hundreds of individual stories of African American migrants and their interracial associates, this rich travel narrative framed by violence, intrigue, and self-determination enriches our understanding of the antebellum period.' Timothy Fritz, The Portolan'… excellent analysis … the book demonstrates that the movement operated within a diverse 'geography of violence,' which shaped the responses of northern whites. The Underground Railroaddraws insightful connections between geographically disparate regions through the lens of cultural violence.' Oran Patrick Kennedy, American Nineteenth Century HistoryTable of ContentsPart I. Origins to 1838: 1. Refugees all: the origins of the Underground Railroad; Part II. 1838–1850: 2. Under siege: borderland activists confront the violence of mastery; 3. Bondage and dignity: accommodation and collision in the contested region; 4. Free soil: Prigg, Latimer, and open resistance in the upper north; Part III. 1850–1860: 5. Law and degradation: lethal violence and beleaguered resistance in the borderland; 6. Above ground: open defiance and the limits of free soil; 7. The end of toleration: the collapse of the Fugitive Slave Act in the contested region; Epilogue: cultures of violence, secession, and war; Appendix: fugitive slave rescues, 1794–1861.

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Book SynopsisAs runaway slaves fled from the South to escape bondage, slave catchers followed in their wake. The arrival of fugitives and slave catchers in the North set off violent confrontations that left participants and local residents enraged and embittered. Historian Robert H. Churchill places the Underground Railroad in the context of a geography of violence, a shifting landscape in which clashing norms of violence shaped the activities of slave catchers and the fugitives and abolitionists who defied them. Churchill maps four distinct cultures of violence: one that prevailed in the South and three more in separate regions of the North: the Borderland, the Contested Region, and the Free Soil Region. Slave catchers who followed fugitives into the North brought with them a Southern culture of violence that sanctioned white brutality as a means of enforcing racial hierarchy and upholding masculine honor, but their arrival triggered vastly different violent reactions in the three regions of the NTrade Review'Churchill's portrayal of the ways in which the distinctively Southern culture of violence alienated Northern communities subject to invasion by slave catchers is exceptionally acute. Churchill has made a lasting contribution to the history of the complex phenomenon that was the Underground Railroad, the nation's first civil rights movement.' Fergus Bordewich, author of Bound for Canaan: The Underground Railroad and the War for the Soul of America'Original, thoroughly and comprehensively researched, well written, and tightly argued.' Steven Lubet, author of The 'Colored Hero' of Harpers Ferry'A significant contribution to the literature on the Underground Railroad.' Graham Hodges, George Dorland Langdon, Jr Professor of History and Africana and Latin American Studies, Colgate University, New York'Using court records, print media, and memoirs, Churchill depicts the pervasive nature of the violence that defined the relationship between fugitive slaves, bounty hunters, abolitionists, and the great many Northerners who wished no association with the culture of slavery.' S. L. Smith, Choice'Considered together with the hundreds of individual stories of African American migrants and their interracial associates, this rich travel narrative framed by violence, intrigue, and self-determination enriches our understanding of the antebellum period.' Timothy Fritz, The Portolan'… excellent analysis … the book demonstrates that the movement operated within a diverse 'geography of violence,' which shaped the responses of northern whites. The Underground Railroaddraws insightful connections between geographically disparate regions through the lens of cultural violence.' Oran Patrick Kennedy, American Nineteenth Century HistoryTable of ContentsPart I. Origins to 1838: 1. Refugees all: the origins of the Underground Railroad; Part II. 1838–1850: 2. Under siege: borderland activists confront the violence of mastery; 3. Bondage and dignity: accommodation and collision in the contested region; 4. Free soil: Prigg, Latimer, and open resistance in the upper north; Part III. 1850–1860: 5. Law and degradation: lethal violence and beleaguered resistance in the borderland; 6. Above ground: open defiance and the limits of free soil; 7. The end of toleration: the collapse of the Fugitive Slave Act in the contested region; Epilogue: cultures of violence, secession, and war; Appendix: fugitive slave rescues, 1794–1861.

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Book SynopsisRunning from Bondage examines the ways in which enslaved women fought for their freedom during and after the Revolutionary War. Exploring who these women were and what motivated them to escape, Karen Cook Bell places their compelling stories within the broader historical narratives of slave resistance and the American Revolution.Trade Review'Karen Cook Bell's research brilliantly shows that the phenomenon of Black female flight in the period of slavery was not idiosyncratic but was, in fact, pervasive. This pathbreaking and beautifully written work centers the voices of Black women in slavery and abolition. A must-read.' Anne C. Bailey, Professor and Director of Graduate Studies, History Department, and Director of the Harriet Tubman Center for the Study of Freedom and Equity, Binghamton University'In this new account of the American Revolution, Karen Cook Bell tells the story of how Black women flipped slavery's geography of containment upside down and redrew it as a treasure map to self-liberation. Her deep dives into fugitive sources bring back amazing stories of women who seized a time of war and disruption as the opportunity to carry themselves and their loved ones out of bondage. After Running from Bondage, no account of this period will be complete unless it shows how Black women's freedom-seeking brought about revolutionary changes.' Edward E. Baptist, Professor of History, Cornell University'Fugitive lives matter! Through the lives and actions of fugitive enslaved women, Running from Bondage will compel the reader to consider the impact of the enslaved upon the American Revolutionary Era. Karen Cook Bell simultaneously restores women to the discussion of fugitivity while restoring both women and fugitivity to the larger narrative of slave resistance during the period.' Peter J. Breaux, Associate Professor of History, Southern University and A&M College'Collectively, Running from Bondage artfully situates fugitive women in the history of the American Revolution and Black resistance … Future scholars of Black women's experience in the Revolution and beyond would be wise to consult Bell's findings and to mirror her approach.' G. Patrick O'Brien, H-Net Reviews'Gracefully written and convincingly argued, Running from Bondage deserves the attention of anyone interested in gender, slavery, or the American Revolution.' Natalie Zacek, The Journal of Interdisciplinary History'Bell has offered an invaluable service in bringing to the center those who have held a 'peripheral position' in the historical record.' Ryan C. McIlhenny, Journal of the Early RepublicTable of ContentsIntroduction: Enslaved women's fugitivity; 1. 'A negro wench named Lucia': Enslaved women during the eighteenth century; 2. 'A mulatto woman named Margaret': Pre-Revolutionary fugitive women; 3. 'A well-dressed woman named Jenny': Revolutionary Black women, 1776–1781; 4. 'A negro woman called Bett': Overcoming obstacles to freedom in Post-Revolutionary America; 5. Confronting the power structures: Marronage and Black women's fugitivity; Conclusion.

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Book SynopsisSlavery''s expansion across the globe often escapes notice because it operates as an underground criminal enterprise, rather than as a legal institution. In this volume, Elizabeth Swanson and James Brewer Stewart bring together scholars from across disciplines to address and expose the roots of modern-day slavery from a historical perspective as a means of supporting activist efforts to fight it in the present. They trace modern slavery to its many sources, examining how it is sustained and how today''s abolitionists might benefit by understanding their predecessors'' successes and failures. Using scholarship also intended as activism, the volume''s authors analyze how the history of African American enslavement might illuminate or obscure the understanding of slavery today and show how the legacies of earlier forms of slavery have shaped human bondage and social relations in the twenty-first century.Trade Review'This insightful book helps to destroy the myth that somehow slavery of the past was fundamentally different to slavery today, and that antislavery was peopled with heroes in the past and bureaucrats today. Expansive yet detailed, rich with discovery, this is slavery scholarship at its best.' Kevin Bales, author of Blood and Earth: Modern Slavery, Ecocide, and the Secret to Saving the World'Starting with the brilliant preface, readers of this volume have much to savor from this superbly written and researched book by top historians. As the diverse and informative essays explain, what differentiates the past from the present is the present illegality of slavery. I recommend this work to a very diverse readership.' Louise Shelley, author of Human Trafficking: A Global Perspective'Slavery is an ongoing stain and this collection is highly relevant in its effort to read from the past to the present. This provides a conceptual depth and a historiography also ballast for our consideration of the present. Strongly recommended.' Jeremy Black, author of A Brief History of Slavery'Swanson … and Stewart … have curated a multidisciplinary anthology on slavery that includes authors from varied backgrounds. … Scholars' analyses connect slavery's past legacies to the present day; slavery is not viewed merely as a historical theme but also as a continuing institution that has evolved to persist in today's world. Contemporary slavery is covered from various angles, incorporating kidnapping, trafficking, and prostitution; some authors make meaningful connections to current political strife related to Confederate monuments and public history as well as presenting commentary on legal slavery's history in the US, including 'black codes' and the 13th Amendment. … The volume is laced with primary and secondary source materials, offering interested readers many avenues for further study … a must read for those interested in slavery as more than an event of the past but very much part of today's world. Summing Up: Recommended.' J. T. Pekarek, Choice'Coming at the subject from different disciplines and with interests in both the past and present, the authors make a compelling case that we must understand that slavery will continue to evolve if we let down our guard or choose to rest comfortably in the illusion that it is no more.' Michael Guasco, The Journal of American HistoryTable of ContentsList of figures; List of contributors; Preface: solidarity of the ages David Blight; Acknowledgments; Introduction: getting beyond chattel slavery James Brewer Stewart and Elizabeth Swanson; Part I. Understanding and Defining Slavery, Then and Now: 1. Contemporary slavery in historical perspective David Richardson; 2. Slavery as civic death: making sense of modern slavery in historical context James Sidbury; 3. From statute to amendment and back again: the evolution of American slavery and antislavery law Allison Mileo Gorsuch; Part II. Forms of Slavery, Past and Present: 4. Kidnappers and subcontractors: historical perspectives on human trafficking John Donoghue; 5. Maritime bondage: comparing past and present Kerry Ward; 6. 'All boys are bound to someone': reimagining freedom in the history of child slavery Anna Mae Duane; 7. From white slavery to anti-prostitution, the long view: law, policy and sex trafficking Jessica R. Pliley; Part III. The Lessons and Solutions of History for Today: 8. All the ships that never sailed: lessons for the modern antislavery movement from the British naval campaigns against the Atlantic slave trade Dave Blair; 9. Defending slavery, denying slavery: rhetorical strategies of the contemporary sex worker rights movement in historical context Elizabeth Swanson and James Brewer Stewart; 10. The power of the past in the present: the capital of the confederacy as an antislavery city Monti Narayan Datta and James Brewer Stewart; An annotated bibliography for further research; Index.

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Book SynopsisA Civil War thriller shot through with Southern Gothic, from the godfather of Southern noir James Lee Burke.Trade ReviewRichly deserves to be described now as one of the finest crime writers America has ever produced * Daily Mail *The king of southern noir * Daily Mirror *One of the finest American writers * Guardian *James Lee Burke is the heavyweight champ, a great American novelist whose work, taken individually or as a whole, is unsurpassed * Michael Connelly *A gorgeous prose stylist * Stephen King *James Lee Burke is the reigning champ of nostalgia noir * New York Times Book Review *

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Book SynopsisFrederick Douglass, a former slave, became the leader of the abolitionist movement. The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave is a first-hand account of his life from indentured slave to a free man. This important and factual work is one of the most persuasive books for the anti-slavery movement.

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