Ira BerlinRecensioni

Realism literature

In Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America, Ira Berlin demonstrates how race was an historical social connection as he argues, “Slavery, though imposed and maintained by violence, was a negotiated relationship” (pg. 2). He continues, “If slavery made race, its larger purpose was to make class, and the fact that the two were made simultaneously by the same process has mystified both” (pg. 5). His survey focuses on four distinct areas: the North; the Chesapeake region; “the coastal lowcountry of South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida;” and “the lower Mississippi Valley” (pg. 7).
Berlin begins with a look at societies with slaves. Examining the Chesapeake region, Berlin writes, “Into the middle years of the seventeenth century and perhaps later, slaves enjoyed the benefits extended to white servants in the mixed labor force” (pg. 32). He continues, “As long as the boundary between slavery and freedom remained permeable, and as long as white and black labored in the fields together, racial slavery remained only one labor system among many” (pg. 38). Of the North, he writes, “Slaves were neither an inconsequential element in northern economic development nor an insignificant portion of the northern population during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries” (pg. 54). He writes of the Lower Mississippi Valley, “The evolution of slavery in the lower Mississippi Valley during the eighteenth century ran backward, from slave society to society with slaves. In the process, black life in Louisiana changed from African to creole, rather than creole to African” (pg. 77).
Transitioning to slave societies, Berlin writes, “The plantation’s distinguishing mark was its peculiar social order, which concede nearly everything to the slaveowner and nothing to the slave” (pg. 97). Further, “As plantation production expanded and the planters’ domination grew, slaves in mainland North America faced higher levels of discipline, harsher working conditions, and greater exploitation than ever before” (pg. 106). He writes of the Chesapeake, “The Africanization of slavery marked a sharp deterioration in the conditions of slave life” (pg. 111). This included increased violence and a new focus on paternalism rather than patronage. Of the Lowcountry and the rise of rice production, Berlin writes, “The battle over the slaves’ economy paralleled, complemented, and complicated the struggle over the masters’ economy, with masters and slaves negotiating and renegotiating the rights to which each believed themselves fully entitled” (pg. 165). Of the lower Mississippi Valley, he writes, “If the plantation revolution affected the northern colonies indirectly, it touched the lower Mississippi Valley – the colonies of Louisiana and West Florida – hardly at all” (pg. 195). Berlin continues, “As the century progressed, slavery in the lower Mississippi Valley increasingly became an urban-centered institution, as in many other societies with slaves” (pg. 199).
Examining the Revolutionary generation, Berlin writes, “The new societies of free and slave did not emerge everywhere at once. Freedom triumphed only in the northern states and then only slowly and imperfectly. But nowhere did slavery enjoy an uninterrupted ascent” (pg. 227). Of the North, he writes, “The American Revolution reversed the development of northern slavery – first, liquidating the remnants of slave society; then, revivifying the North as a society with slaves; finally, transforming the society with slaves into a free society” (pg. 228). He continues, “The heady notions of universal human equality that justified American independence gave black people a powerful weapon with which to attack chattel bondage” (pg. 231). Meanwhile, in the Upper South, “Thousands of slaves gained their freedom in the Upper South, and the greatly enlarged free black population began to reconstruct black life in freedom. But the expansion of slavery and with it a host of new forms of racial dependencies more than counterbalanced the growth of freedom” (pg. 256). During the war, “As slaveholders piled new tasks upon the old, increasing the slaves’ duties and lengthening their workday, wartime changes evoked new struggles between master and slave over the terms of labor and the circumstances of slave life” (pg. 263). In South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida, “As nowhere else on the North American continent, the War for American Independence in the Lower South became a bitter civil war, filled with a savage, fratricidal violence that tore the fabric of society” (pg. 291). He continues, “While the war disrupted plantation life in the Upper South and forced master and slave to renegotiate the terms under which slaves labored, it altered plantation life and labor in the Lower South in far more fundamental ways. With slave discipline in disrepair, slaveholders bowed to the slaves’ demands, allowing them to enlarge their own economies” (pg. 301-302). Of the Lower Mississippi Valley, Berlin writes, “The purchase of Louisiana by the United States ended the great wave of manumissions and self-purchases that had spurred the increase in the number of free people of color. The planter-controlled territorial legislature abruptly terminated the rights the slaves enjoyed” (pg. 333). He continues, “Just as tobacco had earlier remade the Chesapeake and rice the lowcountry, the sugar and cotton revolutions forever altered the livelihood and lives of blacks and whites in the lower Mississippi” (pg. 343).

Berlin argues that southern states treated free blacks in the antebellum period as slaves without masters. In other words, there were a great many restrictions on free blacks. They did not have the same freedoms and rights as whites did. Berlin further argues that after the 13th amendment, southern states applied the same restrictions (black codes, vagrancy laws, curfews, etc.) to all blacks, which became the basis of the Jim Crow segregation system.

Based on a series of lectures, this compact book is an excellent history of the “demise” of slavery as an institution in the US. It knits together all aspects: slave rebellion and resistance, the black and the white abolitionist movements, and the governmental actions (or lack thereof) over a hundred years before the Civil War and the Emancipation Proclamation. The author discusses the primal importance of the slaves’ own resistance and the how they claimed the American ideals of individual freedom for themselves.

Although it took me some time to get through this book, as I read it intermittently and slowly, I found it a fascinating study, full of new insights, a worthy read for anyone interested in the subject specifically or a more holistic American history.

Here is the synopsis from the publisher, and a a review in the NYTImes.

Honestly, I've never been comfortable giving star ratings to nonfiction....

It was very well researched and interesting, if a little dry for me. The comparisons between the different African-American experiences were the most interesting part of the book for me.

It was very well researched and interesting, if a little dry for me. The comparisons between the different African-American experiences were the most interesting part of the book for me.

It was very well researched and interesting, if a little dry for me. The comparisons between the different African-American experiences were the most interesting part of the book for me.

The Atlantic Creole, first people of African descent to be brought as slaves to mainland America. Different from antebellum Cotton-growing slaves, they have participated in the Atlantic System. Arrive in mainland N. America at the same time as Unfree whites. Begin to integrate into new world society. Participate in mainland society. Worm their way out of slavery 1/3 - 1/4 gain slavery. Experience in slavery is radically different from what we think. They are critical to the Chesapeake to New Amsterdam different.

With the advent of plantation slavery, discipline changes. Atlantic Creoles ousted by new generation of slaves from Africa. Little knowledge of western world, don't participate in marginal economies. Work harder, die earlier, transforming slavery. It is this transformation that changes our definition of race.

Early Atlantic Creoles stereotyped as slippery characters, not to be trusted but cleaver. But not stereotyped as plantation generation, as dull, stupid, dirty and lazy. Imposition of the plantation transforms the very definition of race.

To be transformed again in the era of revolutions. Large numbers of blacks gain freedom and slavery is overthrown in the North. Bifurcation of American polity. Slaves even gain freedom in the south. Here again the definition of race changes again as free blacks create schools, churches and new wealth and institutions of their own. Richard Allan, Benjamin Bannaker, etc. as black leaders...

Slavery is a central institution in forming American life. The weight of this experience has weighed on our history - beyond the civil war, beyond reconstruction, beyond civil rights, into today's world. The color line is still the great question of the 21st century. We can benefit from an historicized understanding of these issues.

Part III: Slave and Free: The Revolutionary Generations

Introduction

One impact of the Revolution on slavery was to expose cracks in the "master class" as planters divided between patriot and loyalist. The masters' position eroded under the chaotic conditions of warfare, as the dual effects of revolutionary ideology and evangelical religion worked together to undermine the ideological underpinnings for slavery. Squeezed between the reforms of the Spaniards and the later French Revolution, plantation slavery in the south had external forces to contend with as well. Free slaves themselves agitated for abolition. Yet the forces working against freedom were also strong. As émigrés fled the events of Santo Domingo to the northern mainland, they brought with them renewed fears of slaves. Yet the slave trade was also reopened after the Revolution and slavery also found curious reinforcement from a take on revolutionary ideology that posited black slavery as ipso facto proof that slaves were, in fact, not men at all. The demographic affects of the revolution were in the opening up of western territories and the growing urbanization of the new nation. Slave began to work more in urban centers, which offered opportunities for greater liberty. The forms of slavery and mastery which emerged after the Revolution varied as to time, place and section. Much was determined by the particular circumstances of individual slaves and master. But above all, it was intensely regional.

Chapter 9: The Slow Death of Slavery in the North

The north became free states during the period from the end of the Revolution to the early 19th C (by 1804 every northern state had written manumission into law). Yet slavery died out from slow attrition rather than grand liberation. In the middle colonies especially, the impact of the Revolution's chaos had led slaves to run away and thereby reduce the actual slave population. In Philadelphia, this continued after the end of the war with slaves running away and setting fire to buildings on the seaboard. Progress in the North was very slow, as manumission proceeded slowing in rural areas and remained high in areas like Long Island with high percentages of slave holding families. Taking new names and migrating from the country to the city, freedmen took advantage of their freedom to carve out new lives for themselves. Arriving in cities of the north they took up menial labor positions unlike in the southern cities like Charles Town and New Orleans, they had a hard time carving out a niche for themselves. Encountering difficulties in finding work many black men became sailors. The ones who did find a niche did so in occupations like barbers and carters. Free blacks also went about the task of reconstructing family life in the new urban environment, often living several families to a dwelling. and increasingly living in concentrated areas. These new urban settlements saw the emergence of new African American institutions, among which the churches played a very strong role. A new leadership class arose to preach republican values to the free blacks. Men like Richard Allen and Prince Hall forged a new African American identity, making one of the many ethic divisions of the former slaves.

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

Because the upper south did not enact manumission legislation, bondage not only remained but expanded into the western frontier. As a result of the revolution, however, many slaves had in fact achieved freedom. The society that emerged in the Chesapeake featured close association of free and slave blacks, with little of the class structure that emerged among free blacks in the north. Just as whites rallied around race in the upper south so too blacks.

During the Revolutionary War, Lord Dunmore had incited Virginia slaves to leave their masters and join the loyalist cause in exchange for freedom. Tories seized Patriots' slaves, British continentals took particular joy in freeing the slaves of Patriot leaders. Though as many as 5,000 upper south slaves gained freedom during the Revolution, natural increase easily made up for this allowing the planters of the upper south to emerge from the revolution as opponents of the slave trade adopting a contemptuous posture toward its anxious advocates to their south. After the war, a return to Tobacco from staple culture and the diversification tot wheat brought a new intensification of the labor requirements on slaves at the same time as the new "modern" agricultural approaches of planters required an increasing array of tasks be performed by slave labor, which grew to include work in iron forges and other proto-industrial tasks. Slave families achieved a measure of stability as masters increasingly sanctioned slave marriages, but it was always open to disruption through sale to the west. Slaves were also increasing brought into the cities to work in new occupations in transport and maritime industries. In the cities, however, black labor's competition with white caused conflict. Furthermore, the atmosphere of black life in the city fostered the growth of a type of communal life that evaded white supervision and caused great alarm. As slavery grew and expanded into frontier and urban setting, so too did manumission. An amalgam of free black labor and mobile slave black labor developed in the upper south. This created yet more space for blacks to pass from slave status to free, as they did through purchasing their own freedom or blending with free black population until they could forge papers attesting to their freedom. Free blacks took new names and moved increasingly to the cities. Here too an emergent class of black leaders appeared -- Daniel Coker in Baltimore and Christopher McPherson in Richmond. Here too the African American church played a large role in institution building. Yet the shadow of slavery worked against the emergence of class differences amongst free blacks in the Upper South.

Chapter 11: Fragmentation in the Lower South

Describes the emergence of three cast system -- black, white and brown. As the planters of the lower south moved to re-open the slave trade and primed the system for the expansive growth of slavery of the next half century, they would not even countenance slave manumission. Free blacks in urban areas sought to distance themselves from slaves. Many of them of mixed ancestry, Berlin refers to them as "brown."

The Revolution in the south was a true civil war, with loyalists and patriots squaring off amidst a large population that wanted nothing to do with either side. In this environment, disciple became much more severe for slaves. As fear of black insurrection unsettled whites, it empowered black slaves to desert their owners in droves. Thomas Pinckney of S. Carolina returned from the Continental Congress in 1779 to find all put a handful of his slaves gone. Many groups of slaves escaped to the British. Others escaped to the cities, where they tried to pass themselves off as free and put themselves out to hire. The British, for their part, vacillated on slave liberation. Seeking not to alienate slave-holding Loyalists, they also rounded up run away slaves in the cities and ran captured patriot plantations with slave labor. Slaves received inconsistent treatment at the hands of the Patriots as well, some of whom wanted to arm them to fight the British but others who refused to do so. In some cases Patriots even gave captured slaves to their troops as the spoils of war. Groups of bandits roamed the countryside stealing and looting amidst the chaos of warfare. As the British departed, slaves sought their freedom by departing with the British -- yet even the British ended up allowing Americans to reclaim their "property." The overall effect of the war was a decline in the slave population of the region, prompting the region to agitate for the reopening of the slave trade.

After the war, free blacks formed maroons and fought against the new American government to keep their freedom. In combination with the fears generated by Caribbean slave revolt in 1790s, this lead to an increasingly violent slave system. Cotton growing, which slaves had done on their own during the Revolution, grew tremendously with the introduction of the cotton gin and press. Between 1790 and 1800 cotton exports grew in S. Carolina from 10K lbs to 6 M lbs mostly from the back country! The need for black slave labor encouraged slave holders in the upper south to sell their slaves south before they were under legal obligation to manumit. The S. Carolina government opened the slave trade (1782-87), closed it briefly (1787-1803) and then reopened it again in (1803-1810) -- importing a total of 90K slaves during the period. Plantations became larger as grandees bought up departed loyalists property at bargain prices. Slavery moved west after the war, and cotton agriculture picked up in the back country. In this environment, the slave driver assumed greater prominence and stood as intermediary with the master. Slaves continued to develop their own economies by growing their own crops on small plots and selling their produce. Planters increasingly retreated to cities on the coast, leaving the running of plantations more and more to slave drivers and overseers. In these cities, black slaves worked as artisans and increasingly hired themselves out for wages. The black districts of these cities grew and the organizational infrastructure of black culture also expanded under leaders like the preacher Andrew Bryan in Georgia. In these areas, they mixed with free people of color who came as refugees from the Caribbean as well as escaped slaves. Yet the close ties between slaves who had been freed and their former masters insured that commercial bonds remained even in freedom, leading to a lack of solidarity between the slave and the free among black the black population. Not accepted in white society, but wishing to escape the association with bondage, free people of color formed their own benevolent associations to support burials, the indigent, widows, orphans, etc. The Brown Fellowship Society, founded in Charleston in 1790, acted to fragment black society rather than draw it closer together by excluding slaves and blacks with darker skin. This helped establish a "racial pecking order" in the lower south.

Chapter 12: Slavery and Freedom in the Lower Mississippi Valley

The context of worldwide revolution was most important for the Lower Mississippi Valley, due to its proximity to both Spanish and French colonial possessions. New Orleans, Mobile and Pensacola all became havens for refugees from the Caribbean. At the same time, as sugar and cotton cultivation expanded, this region quickly moved from being a society with slaves to a slave society. In the context of chaos created by war with the Spanish, slaves escaped their plantations to form maroon communities. The community of maroons worked with the slaves to get their goods to market. One community lead by St. Malo was particularly well developed in New Orleans and lead by a bold and audacious leader. The free blacks also fought in the Spanish army frequently. With the expansion of commerce in New Orleans, Mobile and Pensacola under Spanish rule, blacks increasingly found ways to buy their freedom. This trend ended with the Louisiana purchase. The flood of refugees from the Caribbean still continued to swell the ranks of the free black population which was generally lighter skinned and skewed toward females. As with the lower south, in the lower Mississippi Valley free blacks kept associations with their former masters, not hastily discarding their surnames or giving up the commercial links thus forged they were able to reach middling status in the Gulf ports. By owning slaves themselves they sought to enter the ranks of the ruling class.

After the settlement in 1787 between the British and Americans, rapid transformation took place in the Lower Mississippi. As settlers moved into the area with promises of economic opportunity and cultural freedom from the Spanish Crown, they demanded a more secure plantation labor force from the Spaniards. The Spaniards in turn began to enforce the Code Noir and attacked maroon settlements, hunting down and executing St. Malo and many of his followers. Fluctuating wildly between legality and illegality the slave trade on the Mississippi grew in fits and starts. In the 1790s, aided by Caribbean refugees the planters of the valley made the transition to sugar cane agriculture in Lower Louisiana. Further north at Natchez, entrepreneurial tinkerers produced cotton gins that could separate the seed from the fiber and launched the Cotton agricultural revolution around Natchez. Sugar and Cotton required large labor forces, thus the planters sought ever more slaves for their fields, eventually organizing them into work gangs and restricted the slaves' economic lives. Association between the slave black and the free black grew less frequent. Free urban blacks sought to distance themselves from slaves, many of whom were newly arrived from Africa. Prime among the free blacks who sought greater status were those who served in the militia. Carondelet, the Spanish governor of Louisiana, used them liberally and supported many of the blacks attempts to gain freedom. When America bought Louisiana, the free black militias were slowly disempowered and the regime of plantation slavery firmly fixed on the Lower Mississippi.

Epilogue: Making Race, Making Slavery

New racially based slavery of the 19th century is unique, not like the last two centuries. Free North and Slave South are creations of the 19th Century not natural outcomes of the last two hundred years. As labor moves west into the black belt, the south becomes the Cotton South. Slavery in made again through new racial ideas.

Racism infects the North as well, as slavery is seen by Free Labor as a threat to the white man, while black subjugation ignored. Interesting point to follow up on here is the exclusion of black labor from machine shops that Ira Berlin points to, speaks to the interaction of race and technology in the workplace. White male artisans being de-skilled by advancing mechanization of the workplace lash out at blacks? New York city draft riots during the Civil War happen when whites in that city are convinced this is a war to free the black slaves...

This is a good, but authoritative history of the growth of African America. Berlin was a great professor, by the way.

This is a really good textual and pictorial account of slavery in New York.

Ira Berlin is an American historian who has spent his career writing extensively on the larger Atlantic world in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Focused particularly on slavery, Berlin has long been concerned with studying the diversified conditions and auspices of African-American life under slavery. Generations of Captivity, like much of his other work, suggests that slavery in America was complex and ever changing. As he states, “the contest had not ended, for freedom, like slavery, was not made but constantly remade.” (4) In this work, Berlin attributes factors such as demography, geography, and the economy as being the dominating influences which shaped and reshaped slavery in the United States from colonization through the nineteenth century.
Ira Berlin’s book is divided into five parts, which coincide with five “generations” of Africans and their descendents. The way in which these groups dealt with societal shifts and the expanding dynamic of living within a White European population which forced them into submission is intriguing. Berlin is articulate in this narrative as he reflects and reports on these evolutionary cycles. His first chapter entitled “Charter Generations” describes the initial contact between what he refers to as Atlantic creoles and Europeans on the west coast of Africa. Socially and economically versatile, these Atlantic creoles could aspire to gaining freedom, if not full equality, in a world where the lines of bondage were blurred. Free people could be enslaved and slaves could be liberated. As Berlin puts it, “the boundary between slavery and freedom on the African coast was permeable.” (33) At this time, servitude did not necessarily prevent men and women from marrying or even owning property. It was expected that eventually the enslaved would be incorporated into the “host society”.
This dynamic shifted during what Berlin calls the “Plantation Generations” during the eighteenth century. Subjected to the isolating rigors of rice and tobacco cultivation and the increased numbers of Africans being brought in as a labor force, the enslaved population culturally diverged into one characteristically more African. “Whereas members of the charter generations slept and ate under the same roof and worked in the same fields as their owners, the new arrivals lived in a world apart.” (59) As planters consolidated their power, a new sense of mastership began to emerge. Deference and authority began to be emphasized and racial divisions became synonymous with class divisions. Members of this ‘generation’, as Berlin states, “worked harder, died earlier, and escaped slavery less frequently than their predecessors.” (6)
In his third chapter, Berlin addresses a resurgence of natural rights and the effect the War for American Independence had on what he calls the “Revolutionary Generation”. Berlin observes that “the revolutionary era offered slaves new opportunities to challenge both the institution of chattel bondage and the allied structures of white supremacy.” (99) Revolutionary ideology and evangelical thought merged in the late eighteenth century. The Americans were globally chastised for their hypocritical fight for freedom while they kept so many hundreds of thousands in bondage. Even Tom Paine mused in 1775 at the hypocrisy of the battle cry for Independence. Social cognizant awareness of the rights of man being for all men and not merely the select few began to take hold in the northeastern United States. Indeed, by 1780 “numerous northern slaveholders yielded to the logic of the Revolution and freed their slaves or allowed them to purchase their liberty.” (104)
Berlin’s fourth chapter entitled “Migration Generations” discusses the first half of the nineteenth century and the transformation of slavery which occurred due to the Second Middle Passage. This event propelled black society across the continent and, according to Berlin, was the central event for African American peoples between the American Revolution and the demise of slavery in 1865. Indeed, by 1810 most of the black population within the United States was overwhelmingly American-born. As White European society began to expand westward, so did the opportunity for cultivation in the interior south. Berlin has a knack for heart-wrenching descriptivism. This chapter, which is the longest in the book, discusses labor hungry plantation owners who wanted slaves and were not above purchasing free African Americans who had been kidnapped and smuggled into the southern interior. Families were ripped apart as the most desirable slaves were sold and re-sold on the large treks westward. This lonely, debilitating, and dispiriting journey became one where the slaves were “not merely commodified but cut off from nearly every human attachment.” (173)
Yet the effects of the Second Middle Passage were not confined to the southern interior. The lowcountry, which stretched from the Cape Fear River of North Carolina to the St. John’s River in Florida, saw an enormous revival of rice cultivation. Although this new staple offered some subsistence, the competition with the southern interior was significant. No longer would the southern plantations be considered the richest region in America, despite the prosperity of individual planters. Berlin deems this shift as very significant to the evolution of slavery. The early nineteenth century saw the breaking down of the very families that were created and encouraged during the “plantation generation”.
In his epilogue entitled “Freedom Generations”, Berlin concludes his book by drawing on the first-rate work produced at the Freedmens’ Project. With the election of Abraham Lincoln and the onset of the “war between the states” came a tremendous opportunity and light of hope for the enslaved population of the United States. In this chapter, Berlin examines the years of the Civil War and the effects that struggle had on the mindset of slaves within the United States. This conflict inspired a renewed sense of identity and a restructuring of the family within slave populations: “The freedom generation could no more escape its past than previous generations of black men and women. Like those who came before them, they too had no desire to deny their history, only to transform it in the spirit of the revolutionary possibilities presented by emancipation.” (270)
Generations of Captivity: A History of African-American Slaves is an extension of an earlier work by Berlin entitled Many Thousands Gone (1998). Between these two publications, Berlin has shown that in order to fully understand North American slavery, one must first accept that it was an ever-changing and historically contingent institution. The author shows an extraordinary mastery of secondary literature as well as an insightful reading of primary sources and his work is certainly a culminating contribution to the historiography of the slave trade within the Atlantic world. This book should be included in reading lists for any course which discusses slavery in North America in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

This book is about a history of African-American slavery in mainland North America during the first two centuries of European and African settlement. Many associate slavery with the South and cotton fields, rice, and tobacco plantations. MANY THOUSANDS GONE traces the evolution of black society from the early 1700s through the Revolution. Berlin is a leading scholar on African-American life. The work is well illustrated and contains extensive notes and an index.

This book was produced to accompany the New York Historical Society exhibit Slavery in New York. In a series of chapters by respected scholars it tells the history of not only slavery and slaves, but African Americans in general, from the Dutch colonial days through the beginning of the 20th century. Although some reference is made to New York State, the clear focus is on New York City.

The book opens with three chronological chapters on slavery in Dutch New York, British New York and slavery in New York during the revolution. There are then five chapters that deal with different aspects of gradual emancipation and the rise of free black culture and society up to the Civil War. Then there is a chapter on New York's economic ties to the Southern slave economy, a chapter on African Americans in New York during the Civil War, and an epilogue briefly extending the story to the early 20th century.

In all, I thought the authors did a good job balancing scholarly and general interest, although I'm so far to the former that I might not be the best judge. One difficulty with a book that focuses exclusively one one group is that a more general trends may be obscured. I was quite interested in the sections on the rise of black political, cultural and social organizations. However, it is difficult to asses their significance and distinct characteristics without hearing about similar organizing among whites, and particularly white ethnic immigrant groups. But this is a small complain about a generally excellent book.

Probably the best single volume survey of the history of slavery and the living conditions of enslaved Africans in the boundaries of the continental United States. Berlin is a longtime expert and researcher in the field and clearly has a strong grasp of the ever-expanding secondary literature. The book is divided into five chapters emphasizing the changing condition of slavery over time. He begins with the introduction of slavery and slaves in the early colonies and their ties to the wider Atlantic community. Chapter Two charts the changing conditions of slavery with the coming of the tobacco and rice plantations. Chapter Three covers the effects of the Revolutionary Era including the slow process of gradual emancipation in the North. Chapter five examines the rise of the "Cotton Kingdom" and with it the internal slave trade. And finally he ends with the coming of freedom in the Civil War. Berlin is excellent in focusing on the ways in which slave resistance, both active and passive, shaped the institution and eventually helped to spur on its demise.

The book has the typical problems associated with surveys, in this case exacerbated by its relative brevity (It covers a longer period in fewer pages than his prior much-acclaimed survey "Many Thousands Gone"). Many important issue are given only passing attention and it is hard to know whether a new student of slavery could take in so many concepts without a bit more illustration. One omission of note is slavery in the Caribbean. Although outside the boundaries of the United States, the Caribbean islands were an integral (in fact, leading) part of the development of the slave system in the British Empire.

I also worry that Berlin follows the current trends in the literature in spending much of his time on slavery and slaves who fell outside the traditional plantation model. It is important to recognize that slavery was not a monolithic institution, but I think new students would profit from a greater emphasis on the conditions under which most slaves lived most of the time.

I would be interested to here the impressions of students who read this book for undergrad survey courses.

Berlin makes some good points.

326.80973 B5153 2015

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