Many thousands gone : the first two centuries of slavery in North America / Ira Berlin.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Berlin, Ira, 1941-

Series:

ACLS Humanities E-Book.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Slavery--United States--History--17th century.

Slavery.

Slavery--United States--History--18th century.

African Americans--Social conditions--17th century.

African Americans.

African Americans--Social conditions--18th century.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (x, 497 p. ) ill., maps ;

Other Title:

Slavery in North America

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, MA : Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1998.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Today most Americans, black and white, identify slavery with cotton, the deep South, and the African-American church. But at the beginning of the nineteenth century, after almost two hundred years of African-American life in mainland North America, few slaves grew cotton, lived in the deep South, or embraced Christianity. Many Thousands Gone traces the evolution of black society from the first arrivals in the early seventeenth century through the Revolution. In telling their story, Ira Berlin, a leading historian of southern and African-American life, reintegrates slaves into the history of the American working class and into the tapestry of our nation. Laboring as field hands on tobacco and rice plantations, as skilled artisans in port cities, or soldiers along the frontier, generation after generation of African Americans struggled to create a world of their own in circumstances not of their own making. In a panoramic view that stretches from the North to the Chesapeake Bay and Carolina lowcountry to the Mississippi Valley, Many Thousands Gone reveals the diverse forms that slavery and freedom assumed before cotton was king. We witness the transformation that occurred as the first generations of creole slaves—who worked alongside their owners, free blacks, and indentured whites—gave way to the plantation generations, whose back-breaking labor was the sole engine of their society and whose physical and linguistic isolation sustained African traditions on American soil. As the nature of the slaves’ labor changed with place and time, so did the relationship between slave and master, and between slave and society. In this fresh and vivid interpretation, Berlin demonstrates that the meaning of slavery and of race itself was continually renegotiated and redefined, as the nation lurched toward political and economic independence and grappled with the Enlightenment ideals that had inspired its birth.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Prologue: Making Slavery, Making Race

I. SOCIETIES WITH SLAVES: The Charter Generations

Introduction

1. Emergence of Atlantic Creoles in the Chesapeake

2. Expansion of Creole Society in the North

3. Divergent Paths in the Lowcountry

4. Devolution in the Lower Mississippi Valley

II. SLAVE SOCIETIES: The Plantation Generations

5. The Tobacco Revolution in the Chesapeake

6. The Rice Revolution in the Lowcountry

7. Growth and the Transformation of Black Life in the North

8. Stagnation and Transformation in the Lower Mississippi Valley

III. SLAVE AND FREE: The Revolutionary Generations

9. The Slow Death of Slavery in the North

10. The Union of African-American Society in the Upper South

11. Fragmentation in the Lower South

12. Slavery and Freedom in the Lower Mississippi Valley

Epilogue: Making Race, Making Slavery

Tables

Abbreviations

Notes

Acknowledgments

Index

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Includes bibliographical references (p. 379-485) and index.

ISBN:

9780674020825

0674020820

OCLC:

923117025