Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North AmericaToday 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. |
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Contents
Making Slavery Making Race | 1 |
SOCIETIES WITH SLAVES The Charter Generations | 15 |
Emergence of Atlantic Creoles in the Chesapeake | 29 |
Expansion of Creole Society in the North | 47 |
Divergent Paths in the Lowcountry | 64 |
Devolution in the Lower Mississippi Valley | 77 |
SLAVE SOCIETIES The Plantation Generations | 93 |
The Tobacco Revolution in the Chesapeake | 109 |
The Slow Death of Slavery in the North | 228 |
The Union of AfricanAmerican Society in the Upper South | 256 |
Fragmentation in the Lower South | 290 |
Slavery and Freedom in the Lower Mississippi Valley | 325 |
Making Race Making Slavery | 358 |
Tables | 369 |
Abbreviations | 376 |
Notes | 379 |
Other editions - View all
Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America Ira Berlin Limited preview - 2000 |
Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America Ira Berlin No preview available - 1998 |
Common terms and phrases
African descent African slaves African-American Africans in Colonial American Revolution Antebellum arrived artisans Atlantic creoles Baton Rouge became black society bondage Born to Run British Caribbean Chapel Hill Charles Town Charleston charter Chesapeake Church cities Code Noir Colonial Louisiana color comp countryside culture decade economy eighteenth century emancipation enslaved European Forging Freedom former slaves free black free black population freed Freedom by Degrees French Frey fugitives Gazette Georgia History indentured servants independence Indians indigo Kulikoff lowcountry lower Mississippi Valley Lower South mainland North America manumission maroons Maryland militia Morgan Natchez Negro northern Orleans owners Philadelphia plantation slaves planters ports production quotation Race region revolutionary rice rural Saint Domingue Savannah servants Slave Codes slave population Slave Society Slave Trade slaveholders slaveowners Slavery and Freedom social societies with slaves Spanish tion tobacco took transformed Upper South urban slaves Usner Virginia Walsh West Florida World York
References to this book
Violence in War and Peace: An Anthology Nancy Scheper-Hughes,Philippe Bourgois No preview available - 2004 |
Immigration and Opportuntity: Race, Ethnicity, and Employment in the United ... Frank D. Bean,Stephanie Bell-Rose No preview available - 2003 |