Inhuman Bondage The Rise and Fall of Slavery in the New World

by Davis, David Brion

• ISBN13: 9780195339444
• ISBN10: 0195339444
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2008-04-18
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

Winner of a Pulitzer Prize and a National Book Award, David Brion Davis has long been recognized as the leading authority on slavery in the Western World. Now, in Inhuman Bondage, Davis sums up a lifetime of insight in this definitive account of New World slavery. The heart of the book looks at slavery in the American South, describing black slaveholding planters, the rise of the Cotton Kingdom, the daily life of ordinary slaves, the highly destructive slave trade, the sexual exploitation of slaves, the emergence of an African-American culture, and much more. But though centered on the United States, the book offers a global perspective spanning four continents. It is the only study of American slavery that reaches back to ancient foundations and also traces the long evolution of anti-black racism in European thought. Equally important, it combines the subjects of slavery and abolitionism as very few books do, and it connects the actual life of slaves with the crucial place of slavery in American politics, stressing that slavery was integral to America's success as a nation--not a marginal enterprise. A definitive history by a writer deeply immersed in the subject, Inhuman Bondage offers a compelling portrait of the dark side of the American dream. "A tour de force.... Could not be more welcome.... Davis follows the large story of slavery into all corners of the Atlantic world, demonstrating that hardly anyone or anything was untouched by it.... An invaluable guide to explaining what has made slavery's consequences so much a part of contemporary American culture and politics." --Ira Berlin, The New York Times Book Review "A sinewy book that combines erudition and everyday detail into a gripping, often surprising, narrative." --Wall Street Journal

Author Biography

David Brion Davis is Sterling Professor of History Emeritus at Yale University and Director Emeritus of the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition, also at Yale. His books include The Problem of Slavery in Western Culture, The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Revolution, 1770-1823, Slavery and Human Progress, and most recently, Challenging the Boundaries of Slavery.

Table of Contents

Maps

A Selective Calendar of Events

Prologue

The Amistad Test of Law and Justice

The Ancient Foundations of Modern Slavery

The Origins of Anti-Black Racism in the New World

How Africans Became Integral to New World History

The Atlantic Slave System: Brazil and the Caribbean

Slavery in Colonial North America

The Problem of Slavery in the American Revolution

The Impact of the French and Haitian Revolutions

Slavery in the Nineteenth-Century South

From Contradiction to Defense

Slavery in the Nineteenth-Century South

From Slaveholder Treatment and the Nature of Labor to Slave Culture, Sex and Religion, and Free Blacks

Some Nineteenth-Century Slave Conspiracies and Revolts

Explanations of British Abolitionism

Abolitionism in America

The Politics of Slavery in the United States

The Civil War and Slave Emancipation

Epilogue

Notes

Acknowledgments

Index

Table of Contents provided by Publisher. All Rights Reserved.