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

Davis, David Brion

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0195140737 ISBN 13: 9780195140736

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 2006

Synopsis

David Brion Davis has long been recognized as the leading authority on slavery in the Western World. His books have won every major history award--including the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award--and he has been universally praised for his prodigious research, his brilliant analytical skill, and his rich and powerful prose. Now, in Inhuman Bondage, Davis sums up a lifetime of insight in what Stanley L. Engerman calls "a monumental and magisterial book, the essential work on New World slavery for several decades to come."

Davis begins with the dramatic Amistad case, which vividly highlights the international character of the Atlantic slave trade and the roles of the American judiciary, the presidency, the media, and of both black and white abolitionists. 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 internal, long-distance 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 (discussing the classical and biblical justifications for chattel bondage) and also traces the long evolution of anti-black racism (as in the writings of David Hume and Immanuel Kant, among many others). Equally important, it combines the subjects of slavery and abolitionism as very few books do, and it illuminates the meaning of nineteenth-century slave conspiracies and revolts, with a detailed comparison with 3 major revolts in the British Caribbean. It connects the actual life of slaves with the crucial place of slavery in American politics and stresses 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 narrative that links together the profits of slavery, the pain of the enslaved, and the legacy of racism. It is the ultimate portrait of the dark side of the American dream. Yet it offers an inspiring example as well--the story of how abolitionists, barely a fringe group in the 1770s, successfully fought, in the space of a hundred years, to defeat one of human history's greatest evils.

About this title

About the Author

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. Best known for his highly acclaimed books 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, Davis has won a Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award for History and Biography, the Bancroft Prize, the Albert J. Beveridge Award, and the Bruce Catton Prize for Lifetime Achievement, among other honors.

Reviews

Pulitzer Prize-winner Davis follows Challenging the Boundaries of Slavery with this impressive and sprawling history of "human attempts to dehumanize other people" that focuses extensively on slave rebellions. These counter-attempts, Davis argues, are what form the base of the identities and communities of the descendants of New World slaves. In charting the evolution of slavery and societies' responses to it from 71 BCE to 1948, Davis author shows how ancient slavery practices mirrored the process of animal domestication, explores the moral conflicts the United States faced during the American Revolution and how the Haitian revolutions disrupted the class system. A lengthy and especially informative study of British and American abolitionist movements paves the way for a concise breakdown of American slavery politics during the Civil War and reconstruction. Davis's account is rich in detail, and his voice is clear enough to coax even casual readers through this dense history.
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History professor Davis places American slavery in the broader global context as part of the world's first system of multinational production from which mass markets were served. American slaves from West Africa produced commodities that fueled European expansion and the settlement of America. At its peak, American slave labor helped to maximize production for international markets. Davis emphasizes the dehumanizing nature of American slavery and the reliance on racial differences, i.e., between blacks and Native Americans, to solidify social and economic differences. Exploring the origins of antiblack racism, Davis examines nineteenth-century slave revolts, the Civil War, and emancipation. The Amistad case, involving African slaves who commandeered their slave ship and eventually sued for their freedom, provides the basis of an analysis of multinational charters of the Atlantic slave trade. The broader perspective on American slavery--its social and economic impact on the growth of the U.S.--forces readers to face the contradictions between our democratic ideals and economic impulses. Vernon Ford
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Edition details

• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Publication date: 2006
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0195140737
• ISBN 13: 9780195140736
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 464