History of Slavery : books

Histoire de l'esclavage,

History of the Enslaved

sélection d'ouvrages par Nelcya Delanoe

Ira Berlin, Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America . A survey of slavery's very long history in North America, showing how the institution changed over time and how it differed from state to state. 

Stephanie Camp, Closer to Freedom: Enslaved Women and Everyday Resistance in the Plantation South
explores the world of enslaved women, and, as the title suggests, focuses on their ability to resist the enormous oppression they lived under. From sewing fancy dresses to putting up a picture of Abraham Lincoln, enslaved women tried to maintain some of their dignity and push back against the overwhelming power of their captors.  

Drew Faust, James Henry Hammond and the Old South: A Design for Mastery . 
A careful study of one of South Carolina's most important planters, the man who declared that cotton was "king," this book pays close attention both to life on the plantation and Hammond's pro-slavery politics. 

Eric Foner, Nothing But Freedom: Emancipation and Its Legacy .
Foner examines the aftermath of emancipation, showing how the struggle for freedom unfolded on plantations, in state houses and within the federal government, and how formerly enslaved workers pushed for a capacious understanding of freedom that included social, political and economic rights.

Thavolia Glymph's  Out of the House of Bondage: The Transformation of the Plantation Household 
is a brilliant analysis of the relations between black and white women, enslaved and free, in the plantation households of the South, a relationship full of violence. 

Steven Hahn's Pulitzer-Prize winning 
A Nation Under Our Feet: Black Political Struggles in the Rural South from Slavery to the Great Migration 
charts the long-term history of African-American politics and how that politics emerged during the era of slavery. It's an extraordinarily creative reading of political life on the plantation, and beyond. 

Walter Johnson, Soul by Soul: Life Inside the Antebellum Slave Market . 
An examination of the heart of slavery - the slave market - that provides a wrenching analysis
of the processes through which millions of people were made into commodities. 

Manisha Sinha's The Counterrevolution of Slavery: Politics and Ideology in Antebellum South Carolina
focuses on slave owners' political mission to create a state whose central duty was the defense of slavery. Sinha shows that nowhere did the politics of slavery take on a more radical and anti-democratic form than in antebellum South Carolina. 

Alan Taylor, The Internal Enemy: Slavery and War in Virginia, 1772-1832
 is a dazzling (and Pulitzer Prize winning) account of the politics of slavery in Virginia in the age of revolution. Moving effortlessly from the plantation to global politics, Taylor shows how enslaved workers played an important role in the struggle with the British, and how important slavery was to both the creation of the American republic and the fault lines that would eventually result in a war between the states. 

Craig Wilder's  Ebony and Ivy: Race, Slavery, and the Troubled History of America's Universities
 addresses slavery's impact in a place few have looked before -the nation's institutions of higher learning. He shows how enslaved workers helped build the nation's most elite universities and how these institutions all too often defended the interests of powerful slaveholders and gave "scientific" legitimacy to racism.

.