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Summary
Summary
In the late 1990s, most Americans, black and white, identify slavery with cotton, the deep South, and the African-American church. But at the beginning of the 19th century, after almost 200 years of African-American life in mainland North America, few slaves grew cotton, lived in the deep South, or embraced Christianity. This text traces the evolution of black society from the first arrivals in the early-17th century through to 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 the nation.
Author Notes
Ira Berlin was born in New York City on May 27, 1941. He received a bachelor of science degree in chemistry in 1963, a master's degree in history in 1966, and a Ph.D. in history in 1970, all from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. He taught at the University of Illinois at Chicago Circle and Federal City College in Washington before becoming a professor at the University of Maryland in 1974.
He wrote numerous books including Slaves Without Masters: The Free Negro in the Antebellum South, Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America, and The Long Emancipation: The Demise of Slavery in the United States. He also edited several books including Remembering Slavery: African Americans Talk About Their Personal Experiences of Slavery and Emancipation with Marc Favreau and Steven F. Miller. He died from complications of multiple myeloma on June 5, 2018 at the age of 77.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
The history of slavery in North America is not as simple, clear-cut or tidy as is often believed. That is the message of this impeccably presented history of American slavery from 1619, when John Rolfe brought "twenty Negars" to the Jamestown colony, to the 1820s, when the spirit of emancipation began to take hold in the North. Berlin, a history professor at the University of Maryland, shows how at different times and at different places, slavery was a very different thing. He makes a great distinction, for example, between slave societies such as the Carolina low country in the 17th century (in which both the economy and the social structure was built upon slavery) and societies with slaves (the lower Mississippi of the same era) where slavery was only part of a more complex structure. He shows how slavery was different for those born in the West Indies, Africa and North America, and for those serving in urban settings (which encouraged a certain entrepreneurial spirit) and in rural. These distinctions have continuing resonance, as Berlin shows that once a society with slaves became a slave society, all blacksfree or notcould come to be regarded as slaves: in short, how an economic system became racism. Although the prose is serviceable more than anything else, the book holds many surprises gleaned from the facts, whether in its portrait of New York as a major slave city or its descriptions of free enterprise at work among slaves. The economic and historical research presented here is impressive. But what gives the book an additional dimension is its deftly employed social insights. (Sept.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
In a real contribution to the literature of American slavery, Berlin (History/Univ. of Maryland, College Park; co-editor, Families and Freedom, 1997) sketches the complex evolution of that institution in the American colonies and the early US. Berlin divides his account into three periods in which, he contends, slaves had vastly different experiences: the charter generations, made up of the first arrivals in the 17th and early 18th centuries, and their descendants; the plantation generations, which comprised the intermediate generations that cultivated the great staples on which the colonial American economy was based; and the revolutionary generations, which consisted of those who sought freedom in the wake of the promise of the American Revolution. In so doing, Berlin traces the development of a ``society with slaves''that is, in which slavery was a marginal institution that represented only one among many labor sourcesinto a ``slave society'' in which slavery was not only central to the economy but formed the basis of all social institutions. In societies with slaves, such as the northern US, slaves enjoyed a surprising degree of autonomy, maintained their identity as Africans to a large extent, owned property, often negotiated with their masters over the terms of their enslavement, and sometimes ultimately obtained their freedom. In the deep South by contrast, the evolution of the society with slaves into a slave society was accelerated by the emergence of a planter class and consolidated by the growth of cotton as a mass export crop. Here plantation slavery began to assume the patriarchal and corporate features familiar to us today. However, as the author notes, at the beginning of the 19th century, ``the vast majority of black people, slave and free, did not reside in the black belt, grow cotton, or subscribe to Christianity.'' A cogently argued, well-researched narrative that points to the complex nature of American slavery, the falsity of many of our stereotypes, and the unique world wrought by the slaves themselves. (4 illustrations, 4 maps)
Booklist Review
Rather than focus on the much studied slavery of the antebellum South, Berlin examines the earlier history of slavery throughout North America and how it affected the consequent nature and evolution of the peculiar institution. Berlin, an editor of Remembering Slavery, an absorbing collection of slave accounts (see Upfront section of this issue), examines how slave culture was shaped by economic, demographic, and topographic differences. The labor intensiveness of rice and indigo, for instance, discouraged the development of slave enterprises that were created in regions where the dominant crop was the more seasonal tobacco. Berlin explores how the need for diversified labor led to slaves developing artisan skills, and how the need for increased slave population led to encouragement of more stable family relationships. He traces the first African presence in the Americas to a "charter generation" that was multilingual and multicultural, through the "plantation generation" that adjusted its African culture to the various regions of the U.S., and, finally, the "revolutionary generation" that began to challenge U.S. ideals of liberty and freedom in the face of slavery. Throughout this fascinating book, Berlin deftly outlines the human negotiations that went on even in so unequal a relationship as master-slave. --Vanessa Bush
Library Journal Review
Berlin (Free at Last: A Documentary History of Slavery, Freedom, and the Civil War, LJ 12/92) has written an imaginative, detailed account of American slavery from its origins at the beginning of the 17th century through the Revolution. Focusing on regional differences, he examines African American life in the North, the Chesapeake, the Carolina low-country, and the lower Mississippi Valley. His central thesis is that a variety of societies evolved in these regions, some based on slavery, some merely containing the institution. The relationship between blacks and whites was complicated and rich, involving considerable give and take. He concludes that virulent racism developed after the 1820s, when slavery became a more powerful and widespread institution. A major contribution to the study of slavery in the United States.Anthony O. Edmonds, Ball State Univ., Muncie, IN (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Table of Contents
| Prologue: Making Slavery, Making Race | p. 1 |
| I. Societies With Slaves: The Charter Generations | p. 15 |
| 1. Emergence of Atlantic Creoles in the Chesapeake | p. 29 |
| 2. Expansion of Creole Society in the North | p. 47 |
| 3. Divergent Paths in the Lowcountry | p. 64 |
| 4. Devolution in the Lower Mississippi Valley | p. 77 |
| II. Slave Societies: The Plantation Generations | p. 93 |
| 5. The Tobacco Revolution in the Chesapeake | p. 109 |
| 6. The Rice Revolution in the Lowcountry | p. 142 |
| 7. Growth and the Transformation of Black Life in the North | p. 177 |
| 8. Stagnation and Transformation in the Lower Mississippi Valley | p. 195 |
| III. Slave And Free: The Revolutionary Generations | p. 217 |
| 9. The Slow Death of Slavery in the North | p. 228 |
| 10. The Union of African-American Society in the Upper South | p. 256 |
| 11. Fragmentation in the Lower South | p. 290 |
| 12. Slavery and Freedom in the Lower Mississippi Valley | p. 325 |
| Epilogue: Making Race, Making Slavery | p. 358 |
| Tables | p. 369 |
| Abbreviations | p. 376 |
| Notes | p. 379 |
| Acknowledgments | p. 486 |
| Index | p. 490 |
