Bibliographical Essay for Slavery
The most comprehensive guides
to the literature on slavery are Joseph C. Miller, Slavery:
A Worldwide Bibliography, 1900-1996 (1999) and John David
Smith, Black Slavery in the Americas: An Interdisciplinary
Bibliography, 1865-1980 (1982). Updated bibliographies appear
annually in Slavery & Abolition: A Journal of Comparative
Studies, which also publishes important articles and debates
on slavery and antislavery.
General reference works that
include succinct essays on important topics are Seymour Drescher
and Stanley Engerman, eds., A Historical Guide to World Slavery (1998); Paul Finkelman and Joseph C. Miller, eds., Macmillan
Encyclopedia of World Slavery (1998); Randall M. Miller and
John David Smith, eds., Dictionary of Afro-American Slavery (updated ed., 1997); and Junius P. Rodriguez, eds., The Historical
Encyclopedia of World Slavery (1997).
On the historiography of slavery
in the United States, see Charles B. Dew, "The Slavery Experience,"
in John B. Boles and Evelyn Thomas Nolen, eds., Interpreting
Southern History (1987), Peter J. Parish, Slavery: History
and Historians (1989), John David Smith, Slavery, Race,
and American History: Historical Conflict, Trends, and Method,
1866-1953 (1999), and Mark M. Smith, Debating Slavery:
Economy and Society in the Antebellum American South (1998).
An institution that began in
prehistoric times, slavery was practiced on virtually every continent.
Orlando Patterson, Slavery and Social Death (1982) compares
and contrasts the forms that slavery took in diverse societies
around the world. For Asian slavery, see Anthony Reid, ed., Slavery,
Bondage, and Dependency in Southeast Asia (1983) and James
L. Watson, ed., Asian and African Systems of Slavery (1980).
On Middle Eastern slavery, see Bernard Lewis, Race and Slavery
in the Middle East (1990). An incisive overview of the origins,
nature, and abolition of Islamic and New World slavery is David
Brion Davis, Slavery and Human Progress (1984).
On African slavery and the
African slave trade, see Patrick Manning, Slavery and African
Life (1990); Paul E. Lovejoy, Transformations in Slavery:
A History of Slavery in Africa (1983); Joseph C. Miller, Way of Death: Merchant Capitalism and the Angolan Slave Trade,
1730-1830 (1988); and John Thornton, Africa and Africans in
the Making of the Atlantic World, 1400-1680 (2nd ed., 1998),
a study which also examines the critical role of Africans in
the development of New World economies and cultures.
The literature on U.S. slavery
is vast. Among the important general studies that have emphasized
slaves' capacity to resist slavery and establish separate communities
are John B. Boles, Black Southerners (1983); John D. Blassingame, The Slave Community (1979); Eugene D. Genovese, Roll,
Jordan Roll (1974); Charles Joyner, Down by the Riverside (1984); Peter Kolchin, American Slavery (1993); and Leslie
Howard Owens, This Species of Property (1976).
Valuable studies of slaves'
culture and world views include Daniel J. Crowley, ed., African
Folklore in the New World (1977); Dena J. Epstein, Sinful
Tunes and Spirituals (1977); Joseph E. Holloway, Africanisms
in American Culture (1990); Lawrence Levine, Black Culture
and Black Consciousness (1977); Albert J. Raboteau, Slave
Religion (1978); Mechal Sobel, Travelin' On: The Slave
Journey to an Afro-Baptist Faith (1979); Sterling Stuckey, Slave Culture (1987); Michael Vlach, The Afro-American
Tradition in Decorative Arts (1978); and Thomas L. Webber, Deep Like the Rivers: Education in the Slave Quarter Community (1978).
A number of historians have
penetrated America's national boundaries to compare southern
slavery with other systems of slavery and forced labor. Important
works that locate southern slavery in a comparative perspective
include Carl N. Degler, Neither Black Nor White: Slavery and
Race Relations in Brazil and the United States (1971); Richard
S. Dunn, Sugar and Slaves (1972); George M. Frederickson, White Supremacy: A Comparative Study in American and South
African History (1981); Herbert S. Klein, Slavery in the
Americas (1967); and Peter Kolchin, Unfree Labor: American
Slavery and Russian Serfdom (1987).
Not all of the scholars who
have studies slavery are historians. Many economists, who are
interested in the impact of slavery on economic growth, also
conducted intensive research on the institution. The modern debate
over the profitability of slavery and its impact on the southern
economy began with an article by Alfred H. Conrad and John R.
Meyer entitled "The Economics of Slavery in the Antebellum
South," which appeared in the Journal of Political Economy in 1958. Among the scholars inspired by Conrad and Meyer's approach
were Robert William Fogel and Stanley L. Engerman, who used sophisticated
econometric and statistical techniques in their highly controversial
reinterpretation of the slave economy, Time on the Cross (1974). Relying on a wide array of quantitative data, this book
argued that slavery was a highly profitable institution; that
slave labor was highly efficient; that masters promoted stable
nuclear families; and that slaves were healthy, well fed, rarely
whipped, and seldom sold away from their spouses. The volume
produced withering criticism that challenged the book's evidence,
methods, and interpretations, including Herbert B. Gutman, Slavery
and the Numbers Game (1975) and Paul A. David et al., Reckoning
with Slavery (1976). Fogel responded to his critics in 1989
with a volume entitled Without Consent or Contract, which
synthesizes much recent quantitative research on slavery.
Until remarkably recently,
there was a tendency to treat slavery as a static, unchanging
institution. A number of recent volumes chronicle the historical
evolution of American slavery. Valuable studies of colonial slavery
include Ira Berlin, Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries
of Slavery in North America (1998); Timothy H. Breen and
Stephen Innes, "Myne Owne Ground": Race and Freedom
on Virginia's Eastern Shore (1980); Allan Kulikoff, Tobacco
and Slaves: Southern Culture in the Chesapeake (1986); Daniel
C. Littlefield, Rice and Slaves: Ethnicity and the Slave Trade
in Colonial South Carolina (1981); Edmund S. Morgan, American
Slavery, American Freedom (1975); Philip D. Morgan, Slave
Counterpoint: Black Culture in the Eighteenth-Century Chesapeake
and Low Country (1998); Robert Olwell, Masters, Slaves,
and Subjects: The Culture of Power in the South Carolina Low
Country, 1740-1790 (1998); Mechal Sobel, The World They
Made Together: Black and White Values in Eighteenth-Century Virginia (1987); Lorena S. Walsh, From Calabar to Carter's Grove: The
History of a Virginia Slave Community (1997. and Donald R.
Wright, African Americans in the Colonial Era (1990).
For slavery during the revolutionary
era, see Ira Berlin and Ronald Hoffman, eds., Slavery and
Freedom in the Age of the American Revolution (1983); Paul
Finkelman, Slavery and the Founders: Race and Liberty in the
Age of Jefferson (1996); Sylvia R. Frey, Water from the
Rock: Black Resistance in a Revolutionary Age (1991); and
Shane White, Somewhat More Independent: The End of Slavery
in New York City (1991).
A large number of important
recent studies have explored slavery's aftermath. Among the important
recent works that focus on the African American experience during
the Civil War and Reconstruction are Ira Berlin, ed., Freedom:
A Documentary History of Emancipation, 1861-1867 (1982);
Barbara Jean Fields, Slavery and Freedom on the Middle Ground:
Maryland (1985); Eric Foner, Reconstruction (1988);
Joseph T. Glatthaar, Forged in Battle: The Civil War Alliance
Between Black Soldiers and White Officers (1990); Leon Litwack "Been in the Storm So Long" (1979); and Jay
R. Mandle, Not Slave, Not Free (1992).
No aspect of slavery has gone
unexamined. For the origins and implications of racism, see George
M. Fredrickson, The Black Image in the White Mind (1971)
and Winthrop Jordan, White Over Black (1968). On the nature
of antislavery movements and comparative emancipations, see Ira
Berlin, et al. Slaves No More (1992); David Brion Davis, The Problem of Slavery in Western Culture (1967) and The
Problem of Slavery in the Age of Revolution (1975); Eric
Foner, Nothing But Freedom (1983); Thomas C. Holt, The
Problem of Freedom: Race, Labor and Politics in Jamaica and Britain,
1832-1938 (1992); and Robert Brent Toplin, The Abolition
of Slavery in Brazil (1975).
There are many specialized
studies worthy of note. The law of slavery is analyzed in Paul
Finkelman, ed., Slavery and the Law (1996); A Leon Higginbotham,
Jr., In the Matter of Color (1978); Mark Tushnet, The
American Law of Slavery (1981); and Alan Watson, Slave
Law in the Americas (1989).
On slave resistance in the
Americas, see Eugene D. Genovese, From Rebellion to Revolution:
Afro-American Slave Revolts (1979). On fugitive slaves, see
John Hope Franklin and Loren Schweninger, Runaway Slaves (1999).
Women's lives under slavery
are skillfully explored in Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, Within
the Plantation Household: Black and White Women in the Old South (1988); Jacqueline Jones, Labor of Love, Labor of Sorrow (1985); Melton A. McLaurin, Celia: A Slave (1991); and
Deborah Gray White, Ar'n't I a Woman (1985).
On slave families, see Herbert
G. Gutman, The Black Family in Slavery and Freedom (1976)
and Brenda Stevenson, Life in Black and White: Family and
Community in the Slave South (1996). For slave children,
see Wilma King, Stolen Childhood: Slave Youth in Nineteenth-Century
America (1995) and Marie Jenkins Schwartz, Born in Bondage (1999).
Medical histories of slavery include Kenneth F. Kiple and Virginia
Himmelsteib King, Another Dimension to the Black Diaspora:
Diet, Disease, and Racism (1981) and Todd L. Savitt, Medicine
and Slavery (1978).
For urban slavery, see Claudia
D. Goldin, Urban Slavery in the American South (1976)
and Richard C. Wade, Slavery in the Cities (1964). On
free blacks, see Ira Berlin, Slaves Without Masters (1974);
and Michael P. Johnson and James L. Roark, Black Masters (1984) and No Chariot Let Down: Charleston's Free People of
Back to Top