Race traffic : antislavery and the origins of white victimhood, 1619-1819 / Gunther Peck.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Peck, Gunther, author.

Contributor:

Omohundro Institute of Early American History & Culture, issuing body.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

White people--Race identity--United States--History.

White people.

Human trafficking--United States--History.

Human trafficking.

Racism against Black people--United States--History.

Racism against Black people.

Physical Description:

xviii, 489 pages : illustrations ; 25 cm

Place of Publication:

Williamsburg, Virginia : Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture ; Chapel Hill : University of North Carolina Press, [2024]

Summary:

"Fantasies of white slavery and the narratives of victimhood they spawn form the foundation of racist ideology. They also obscure the lived experience of trafficked servants and sailors in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Gunther Peck moves deftly between the Atlantic and Mediterranean worlds to discover where and when people with light skin color came to see themselves as white. Separating fact from fiction, and paying close attention to the ideological work each performs, Peck shows how laboring women and men leveraged their newfound whiteness to secure economic opportunity and political power. Peck argues that whiteness emerged not as a claim of racial superiority but as a byproduct of wide-ranging and rancorous public debate over trafficking and enslavement. Even as whiteness became a legal category that signaled privilege, trafficking and race remained tightly interwoven. Those advocating for the value of whiteness invoked emotionally freighted victimhood, claiming that so-called white slavery was a crime whose costs far exceeded those associated with the enslavement of African peoples across the Americas. Peck helps us understand the chilling history that produced the racist ideology that still poisons our politics in the present day"-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Introduction: Race Traffic, Past and Present

The Origins of Race Traffic

Ransom Traffic and Antislavery in the Mediterranean

Novel Ways of Seeing the Color of Race

Atlantic Slave-Servant Conspiracies

Nationalizing Emancipation in the Mediterranean

War, Traffic, and Race across the British Empire

Trafficking, Freedom, and Race in the Age of Revolution

Antislavery Nationalism and Race

Conclusion: The Radical Challenge to Race Traffic

Appendix A. The Colonial State Papers

Appendix B. Early English Books Online

Appendix C. Eighteenth-Century Collections Online

Appendix D. Daniel Horsemanden's Journal of the Proceedings.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9781469675145

1469675145

OCLC:

1430194271