Book Description
The voyage that shaped early America was neither that of the Susan Constant in 1607 nor the Mayflower in 1620. Absolutely vital to the formation of English-speaking America was the voyage made by some sixty Africans stolen from a Spanish slave ship and brought to the young struggling colony of Jamestown in 1619. It was an act of colonial piracy that angered King James I of England, causing him to carve up the Virginia Company’s monopoly for virtually all of North America. It was an infusion of brave and competent souls who were essential to Jamestown’s survival and success. And it was the arrival of pioneers who would fire the first salvos in the centuries-long African-American battle for liberation. Until now, it has been buried by historians.
Four hundred years after the birth of English-speaking America, as a nation turns its attention to its ancestry, The Birth of Black America reconstructs the true origins of the United States and of the African-American experience.
Customer Reviews:
African Americans and their background.......2007-08-07
This book is excellent for 1) putting the arrival of Africans at Jamestown in context both in European (English, Spanish and Portuguese) politics of the time, and 2) giving in great detail the political, social and economic situation of the Angolan kingdom whence these Africans originated. The activities of the Spanish ambassador to the court of King James is enjoyable diplomatic intrigue; the relation of James to Africa is convincing and should be part of literary studies of Ben Jonson's work. I was amazed to learn that many of the enslaved Africans had Christian backgrounds of several generations, and familiarity with European languages and customs, resulting from Portuguese colonization and missionary activities for more than a century prior. Hashaw does himself credit in showing the similarities and differences in the political and military activities and alliances of these African and European rulers and aristocracies. In addition, he shows in great detail the identities, activities and onward movements of these Africans and their descendents (who are normally anonymous figures in standard histories), and gives credible evidence on the origin of the Melungeon families of Appalachia, and insight into the contributions of Africans to cattle herding and to agricultural success in the Americas. A real page-turner -- a riveting and enlightening account that makes fresh some once-stale facts from your obligatory American history class.
The Birth of Black America: The First African Americans and the Pursuit of Freedom at Jamestown.......2007-03-30
The book was excellent!
Book Description
Making Algeria French relates the history of the pieds noirs and Algerians in colonial Bône, renamed Annaba in 1962. Located in eastern Algeria, this Mediterranean port city staked an early claim to world historical fame as the site of St. Augustine’s Hippo. Long after the Romans, as well as the Arabs and Turks, the French tried their hand at settling Algeria. Not content with mere occupation, they constructed colonial cities along the Mediterranean littoral -Algiers, Oran, Bône - and populated them with twice as many European settlers - French, Spanish, Italians, and Maltese - as native Algerians. Using the history of Bône as a lens, David Prochaska looks at the nature of French colonialism in Algeria. His study is based on research in the former Bône municipal archives, generally barred to researchers since 1962. Prochaska concentrates on the formative decades of settler society and culture between 1870 and 1920. After an overview of Bône in 1830, and a survey of French rule from 1830 to 1870, he describes in turn the economic, social, political, and cultural history of Bône through the First World War. He argues that, in making Bône a European city in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the settlers effectively blocked social evolution, attempted to contain history, and thereby precluded any genuine rapprochement with the Algerians in the twentieth century.
Download Description
Making Algeria French relates the history of the pieds noirs and Algerians in colonial Bône, renamed Annaba in 1962. Located in eastern Algeria, this Mediterranean port city staked an early claim to world historical fame as the site of St. Augustine's Hippo. Long after the Romans, as well as the Arabs and Turks, the French tried their hand at settling Algeria. Not content with mere occupation, they constructed colonial cities along the Mediterranean littoral -Algiers, Oran, Bône - and populated them with twice as many European settlers - French, Spanish, Italians, and Maltese - as native Algerians. Using the history of Bône as a lens, David Prochaska looks at the nature of French colonialism in Algeria. His study is based on research in the former Bône municipal archives, generally barred to researchers since 1962. Prochaska concentrates on the formative decades of settler society and culture between 1870 and 1920. After an overview of Bône in 1830, and a survey of French rule from 1830 to 1870, he describes in turn the economic, social, political, and cultural history of Bône through the First World War. He argues that, in making Bône a European city in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the settlers effectively blocked social evolution, attempted to contain history, and thereby precluded any genuine rapprochement with the Algerians in the twentieth century.
Book Description
The idea of universal rights is often understood as the product of Europe, but as Laurent Dubois demonstrates, it was profoundly shaped by the struggle over slavery and citizenship in the French Caribbean. Dubois examines this Caribbean revolution by focusing on Guadeloupe, where, in the early 1790s, insurgents on the island fought for equality and freedom and formed alliances with besieged Republicans. In 1794, slavery was abolished throughout the French Empire, ushering in a new colonial order in which all people, regardless of race, were entitled to the same rights.
But French administrators on the island combined emancipation with new forms of coercion and racial exclusion, even as newly freed slaves struggled for a fuller freedom. In 1802, the experiment in emancipation was reversed and slavery was brutally reestablished, though rebels in Saint-Domingue avoided the same fate by defeating the French and creating an independent Haiti.
The political culture of republicanism, Dubois argues, was transformed through this transcultural and transatlantic struggle for liberty and citizenship. The slaves-turned-citizens of the French Caribbean expanded the political possibilities of the Enlightenment by giving new and radical content to the idea of universal rights.
Customer Reviews:
A must read to understanding how the Caribbean was shaped.......2006-12-29
The end of slavery in the French Caribbean is a story that has many facets. This book looks at one of the smaller islands (Guadalupe) and tracks its progress as it tries to free itself from the grips of slavery. Dubios tells a very good story and it is well written. The book focuses on Guadalupe but also gives a sense of what is happening in the entire British and French Caribbean. Dubios in her other books really provides a complete picture of what is occurring in the Caribbean and they are all recommended.
Book Description
Exploring the paradox of the concurrent development of slavery and freedom in the European domains, The Rise of African Slavery in the Americas provides a fresh interpretation of the development of the English Atlantic slave system. The book outlines a major African role in the evolution of the Atlantic societies before the nineteenth century and argues that the transatlantic slave trade was a result of African strength rather than African weakness. It also addresses changing patterns of group identity to account for the racial basis of slavery in the early modern Atlantic World.
Customer Reviews:
Strong content, but not strikingly new ideas in the field.......2001-09-27
In his work titled The Rise of Africa Slavery in the Americas, David Eltis approaches the subject with the aim of highlighting "the tensions that emerge as people pursue goals, moral or material, that cannot be achieved at once or are at odds with some aspect of their individual or their system of belief." Here, Eltis attempts to clarify the "How?" of slavery. While offering a great insight into the intentions and rational of European enslavement of Africans, Eltis does not provide a revolutionary new view of slavery. His work is centered around proving that "it was not just European power and resources that made overseas expansion possible, but also the subcontinent's odd social structure and values." Eltis adds support to the evidence that Africans not only played a significant role in the development of the Atlantic Slave Trade but that the success of the trade was more due to the strengths of the African traders and the strength of number among the enslaved.
Amazon.com
Though there was no tradition of slavery in England, it was the norm throughout British colonies in North America and the Caribbean by the end of the 17th century. Historian Betty Wood examines the reasons for its spread in this scholarly, but readable, book. She begins by noting that the British believed slavery was appropriate for non-Christian foreigners, and that Africans belonged to that category. Once the need for cheap labor in the Americas became apparent, planters turned to Africa, and slavery, which had once seemed unthinkable, spread throughout the colonies in an unholy alliance of these two factors--racism and economics.
Book Description
The Hill and Wang Critical Issues Series: concise, affordable works on pivotal topics in American history, society, and politics.
The Origins of American Slavery is a short analysis that shows the complex rationale behind the English establishment of American slavery in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. This new assessment of a pivotal time in the formation of what was to become the United States offers thought-provoking insights into the English influence on the development of the "peculiar institution."
Customer Reviews:
Incomplete treatise.......2001-05-09
The author does an excellent job of analyzing slavery, ex post facto. There is little information about the roots of slavery, specifically the institutionalization of slavery in Africa, well before Europeans began to use Africans as forced labor. Entire African nations were built on slavery. The American view of slavery is that Europeans went into the bush, captured slaves, and brought them back. Historical documents reflect that the slaves were bought from enormously wealthy and powerful black slave dealers along the Ivory Coast. Scholarly works should include the entire background of slavery if we are to understand this painful part of America's past as well as understand why it continues in parts of Africa to this day. A side note- the word "slave" has Slavic origins. Slaves were of European extract for centuries.
Good book, but could be better.......1998-08-23
Ms. Woods examination of the attitudes that led to enslavement of Africans and Native Americans is well done, but I wish she'd brought out some of the similarity in attitudes toward indigenous European culture, the Irish for instance. The same attitude of being "hardly human," and "savage," the callousness with which they were eliminated from their land in the late 1500's and the slavery that they experienced (200 Irish women were sent to Barbados as wives for black slaves, for instance) points to a bias which was cultural as well as racial. Well worth reading, however.
Average customer rating:
- What an exciting adventure
- A key element was missing.
- Look to the Hills
- A nice novel
- Didn't live up to high Dear America standard, but ok
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Look to the Hills: The Diary of Lozette Moreau, a French Slave Girl, New York Colony 1763 (Dear America Series)
Patricia C. Mckissack
Manufacturer: Scholastic Inc.
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ASIN: 0439210380 |
Book Description
Arriving with her French masters in upstate New York at the tail end of the French-Indian War, Lozette, "Zettie," an orphaned slave girl, is confronted with new landscapes, new conditions, and new conflicts. As her masters are torn between their own nationality and their somewhat reluctant new allegiance to the British colonial government, Zettie, too, must reconsider her own loyalties.
Customer Reviews:
What an exciting adventure.......2007-08-08
Zettie is a slave to Marie-Louise's father but when he dies she worries about what will happen to her. Marie-Louise convinces her fiancee to buy Zettie. They then escape to Spain and then to America in search of Marie-Louise's other brother Jacques who was thought to be dead but may in fact be alive. For Zettie, she keeps hoping Marie-Louise or Jacques will be able to free her. I like that she does eventually become freed. I enjoyed reading all about Colonial America, the forts, French and Indian wars and a part of American history I don't hear about. I liked Zettie a lot. She was a smart, clever girl who was a fabelous duelist.
A key element was missing........2006-02-22
"Look To The Hills, The Diary Of Lozette Moreau, A French Slave Girl" was a "Dear America" book that interested me greatly. I thought it'd be interesting to read about another form of slavery: companions. I admit to not knowing much about this, and I thought what better way to be introduced than through the beloved "Dear America" series? I must say that I was disappointed. I think that author Patricia C. McKissack is not my type of author, and I find her plots rather boring. I didn't warm up to any of the characters, and I felt that something was missing - mainly action. For the historical point of view, I enjoyed it, but for the entertaining point of view, I didn't. I "sorta" recommend.
Look to the Hills.......2005-04-04
I have read the book Look to the Hills, the diary of a French slave girl. My recommendation for this book would be, to encourage people to read it. It is about a young lady named Lozette Moreau (Zettie for short). She is a slave to a young French lady named Marie-Louise Boyer (Ree for short). Ree's father purchased Zettie as a young girl to be a companion to Ree. At least that's what everybody tells Zettie, but she knows she is really just her slave. She goes wherever Ree goes, and does what ever Ree does. This book is mostly about the life of Zettie.
The year is 1763. The war between the French and the British is going on. Ree's bother is battling the British in America, to gain more land for the French. Ree's other brother could not fight in the war because he had and injured knee. Unfortunately Ree's brother had previously gambled money, and had lost his fathers whole fortune. This book tells a lot of historical facts. One example would be the fact that the French are fighting the British and many, many soldiers are getting killed. Zettie falls in love with one of Ree's friends that is very kind to her and is a true gentleman, Saint George. When Ree's brother arranges a marriage for Ree to get married to Jean-Paul. Ree and Zettie both go on a carriage to the French suburbs where he lives. But they are robbed secretly by Saint George so that Ree would not have to marry Jean-Paul. Ree decides to go and find her brother, which is in the war since her father has already died. Saint George helps them get to Spain to get closer to America to find her brother.They stay in an old friends house. But they do not treat Zettie very well. This book really showed me the way that a black woman really suffered in that time even if she did have an amazing owner that was kind to her.
so in other words I really recommend that you read this book. It actually inspired me to be more grateful and thankful that I live in this time period. It showed me that it was really tough back then and even if there were some nice masters, there were still some really tough ones too. For example when Zettie and Ree went to Spain, they lived in a house with an old friend of Ree. The woman who lived in there had absolutely no respect for Zettie and treated her like an animal. I hope that you read this book because it was wonderful to read, and I really enjoyed learning about the life of a French slave girl.
A nice novel .......2004-09-21
After starting high school, I started taking French as a foreign language so I was really looking forward to reading this book and learning more about the French culture. The book didn't disappoint me. 12-year-old Lorzette Moreau "Zettie" is a companion, a better world for a slave in the upper class French society. Her mistress, Marie Moreau "Rae" is set to be married to a man she does not love so that Maries brother Pierre can pay off his debts. Zettie is also set to be sold off. When Zettie begins the diary she is locked in a room waiting for the day she will be sold and never see her mistress again. Little does she know that Rae has a plan for escape. After a daring escape, Zettie and Rae, with the help of friends, find themselves at the Ortega's house, Rae's godparents. There, they learn that Jacques, Rae's older brother, presumed dead from the war between France and England, may be alive and well as a captive in the Colonies, America. So, soon Zettie finds herself setting foot in a new land. However, Zettie finds that the way Americans treat slaves are no differnt than in France. Even though Rae is very nice to her, Zettie still isn't Rae's equal. Zettie yearns for freedom and she soon begins to learn that she might be able to use her skills to do just that. Will Zettie be able to look to the other side of the hills, freedom?
I definitely enjoyed this book. It had a new perspective on the slave, one that was refreshing and different. I recommend all readers of Dear America to read this book.
Didn't live up to high Dear America standard, but ok.......2004-05-28
Look to the Hills is a story that tells of Lozette Moreau's, a French slave girl, journey from France to New York in 1763 and of her ongoing wish for freedom. Whatever happens, this spirited girl always keeps her hopes alive. From Aix-en-Provence, France, to Spain, across the Atlantic Ocean, to New York Colony, wherever she goes, Lozette, or Zettie, is forever hopeful, and inspires others to be so too.
Zettie has been Marie-Louise Boyer's, or Ree's, companion for as long as she can remember. Companions are slaves who go everywhere and do everything with their masters, sharing many of the same privileges. Zettie has always been well-treated and has never really considered herself a slave. But when Ree's father dies and her ruthless brother Pierre takes over, Zettie realizes how vulnerable she really is. Ree is forced to marry a man she hates, and she persuades her husband to purchase Zettie, who Pierre is auctioning, as a wedding gift for Ree. Their friend St. Georges then helps Zettie and Ree escape to Spain, where they will search for Ree's lost brother, Jacques. They learn that he is in America, where he was presumed to be killed in battle, and they sail to New York.
Once in New York, Zettie and Ree move to Fort Niagara. While Ree finds her brother, who has been accused of deserting the French army, and falls in love, Zettie has her own adventures. She meets many new friends, learns about her heritiage, becomes involved in the French and Indian war and the wars between the Indians and the English colonists, and competes in a fencing match. But most of all, Zettie inspires everyone she meets to want freedom and to keep their hopes up.
This book told about some topics we haven't learned much about: slavery before the Revolutionary War, and slavery in other countries. The characters were very believable, but after the first half of the book, it didn't have much of a plot.
Book Description
""A radical, well-informed, and highly original reinterpretation of the place of slavery in the American War of Independence."-David Brion Davis, Yale University
In 1772, the High Court in London brought about the conditions that would end slavery in England by freeing a black slave from Virginia named Somerset. This decision began a key facet of independence.
Slave Nation is a fascinating account of the role slavery played in the drawing of the United States Constitution and in shaping the United States. At the Constitutional Convention, the South feared that the Northern states would leave the Convention over the issue of slavery. In a compromise, the Southern states agreed to slavery's prohibition north of the Ohio River, resulting in the Northwest Ordinance. This early national division would continue to escalate, eventually only reaching resolution through the Civil War."
Customer Reviews:
An important milestone in historical method (ironically !!).......2007-06-04
I will not elaborate here my opnion (because, namely, it is that - an opinion); however: is it just me, or is a one-paragraph thumbnail sketch of this text's premise more convincing *after* reading this text than *before*? I've read about sixty monographs and maybe half that many secondary sources on this topic, so I'm certainly no scholar; but the evidence (and by that word I mean "data," not "proof") enclosed here does more to negate the premise than support it. Were it not the reputation garnered by the authors, I would had certainly commended them for slyly suggesting that the information available for supporting their notion - that slavery was a major factor in unionizing the States - is more or less unfounded. I read most of this book in one reading, and was honestly expecting an assertion of "GOTCHA" in an epilogue. But this never happens, and as a result I just have to wonder how convinced the authors are of their suppositions laid out here. Perhaps, *perhaps*, this book needed to be edited, and what was left on the cutting room floor (if indeed there is such a thing in the book editing industry) was important manna; and if this is the case, I certainly owe the authors an apology for supposing the absurd. Indeed, they have done their scholarly rounds. I simply feel uneasy about their conclusions.
The South preserves the Union (the North trades slaves for Ohio).......2006-05-10
This book convincingly argues its unflattering central thesis: that a slavery-limiting London court case inspired southern slave owners to join forces with independence-minded Massachussets firebrands. (Despite being only a limited and technical ruling that fugitive slaves could not be arrested in Great Britain). The authors overreach at times--they are lawyers, not logicians--but demonstrate the decisive importance of slavery to the southern leadership, including specific delegates attending the congresses and committees they consider.
One significant contribution is their thesis that the Northwest Ordinance was a southern concession to the interests of northern abolitionists, made to preserve the union. This is accompanied by proof that the Ordinance did not "implicitly" legalize southwestern slavery, as sometimes contended, because that was already explicitly legal.
The authors argue that the Northwest Ordinance was in fact proposed to resolve the (well-documented) north-south impasse that threatened an end to the Union. They prove that southern Congressmen were in the right places at the right times to make this physically possible within the known timeframes. They also endeavor to deduce who was most likely by temperament to propose the compromise and to carry it to Congress. While that speculation is only an interesting aside, the demonstration that the proposal could have been proposed at the Convention is vital to their important thesis of a southern effort to avoid northern secession.
Readers will also be interested in the portrait the book draws of Jefferson laboring carefully to exclude the right to property from his Declaration of Indepence, specifically to inspire the eventual liberation of slaves (albeit at a date too late to affect his own economic interests).
England & America Divided By This Issue........2006-01-11
Before the national issue in America in the middle 1800s concerning owning African slaves, a century earlier England had 15,000 of their own slaves from the West Indies. An application to Parliament in 1766 concerning their 'property' or 'commodity' was of great commercial conern to the slave owners who, no doubt, being British called them 'servants.'
"On June 22, 1772, nearly a century before the slaves were freed in America, a British judge, with a single decision, brought about the conditions that would end slavery in England. His decision would have monumental consequences in the American colonies, leading up to the American Revolution, the Civil War, and beyond. Because of this ruling, history would be forever changed. This book is about that decision and the role of slavery in the founding of the United States." In 1749, a nine-year-old boy growing up in a West African village was kidnapped and transported 'via the infamous Middle Passage' to America where he was bought by Charles Stewart of Norfolk, Virginia. He was a young Scottish-born merchant who was drawn to the tobacco industry and trained 'Somerset' as his own personal servant and business assistant, always at his side as a young man. After twenty years of co-dependence, Charles Stewart sailed to England with Somerset to help raise his sister's children after the death of her husband. The servant had never known such freedom as an adult and insinuated himself into "a black community of thousands of former slaves and free persons, mainly from the British West Indian colonies."
After two years in London, he left Stewart's home and refused to return. Since leaving his master, he had "insulted his person," caught and set to be deported to Jamaica to be sold as the slave he'd been for 23 years. "Some London blacks were free. Some, like Somerset, were slaves to colonials living in London. Some had been freed by their masters. Some worked; some were beggars known as the "St. Giles Blackbirds." Some were popular artists and singers. Some were seamen or servants. Some had been runaways whose owners had given up looking for them."
Lord Mansfield, the chief justice of the Court of King's Bench, ruled in favor of Somerset who then became a free man. Stewart's lawyer had argued "that freeing the fourteen or fifteen thousand slaves in England would produce profound disruption and that the owners would suffer a loss of 700,000 life or an average of 50 life per slave." It is documented that Mansfield was prejudiced when he "decided that a slave could not be held captive by his master. This, he said, would effectively abolish slavery in England." In the end, James Somerset merged into the black community of London, but his case lived on. 'Somerset never knew that his private quest for freedom was the spark that helped start the American Revolution and that has haunted the nation down to the present day."
Thus, the American Revolution when the southern states joined the northern colonies, to rebel against England's domination and the First Continental Congress was formed in 1774 by John Adams. Thomas Jefferson supported the end of international slave trade as distinct from slavery itself. By 1776, we had a United States Constitution which encompassed ten new states in the Northwest Territory, half slave, half free, "hardly a republic anyone could call united." The Articles of Confederation were adopted in November, 1777, with the help of John Rutledge of South Carolina and Thomas Burke of North Carolina. "Each state retains its sovereignty, freedom and independence, and every power, jurisdiction, and right which is not by this confederation expressly delegated to the United States, in Congress assembled."
It took the War Between the States and the assassination of Abraham Lincoln to settle the issue of slavery once and for all. "Ultimarely, the Civil War resulted from the southern decision to try for a second time to preserve slavery by seceding from a government which challenged it. Secession from Britain had worked the first time, extending slavery an additional thirty years beyond its abolition in the British Empire. This dream of a souther slave empire fueled the secessionist movement. The dream ended at Gettysburg and Vicksburg in early July, 1863, the anniversary month of the Declaration of Independence. Of the nearly 180,000 black troops that served in the Union Army during the Civil War, at least 138,000 were former slaves." The end of the Civil War meant the end of formal slavery in the United States, but race subordination perpetuated the inferior position of the former slaves and their descendants for a century.
The "intent of the framers" of the Constitution was to preserve legal slavery.......2005-11-07
Slave Nation should be required reading in the areas of American history and constitutional law. To reply to one Amazon reviewer's comment, the British high court decision in the matter of James Somerset did not free the slaves in the colonies. It determined was that slavery was not lawful in Britain under the British Common Law because slavery was an unnatural and odious condition, and could only exist as a property right in jurisdictions where it had been legislated into existence. Because no law was ever enacted in Britain to create that right, James Somerset became free when he stepped onto British soil. However, the colonial legislatures had legalized slavery in their jurisdictions. This is the origin of the "sacred" principle of "state's rights"-- invented by the politicians who made the American Revolution and authored the Constitution in order to bring the southern colonies into the revolution and keep them as part of the new United States.
Slave Nation brilliantly and clearly describes the economics of slavery in colonial and post-Revolution America, and--very important--shows how the Constitutional Convention was held at the same time as the Continental Congress which was negotiating the terms of the Northwest Ordinance. That law determined the allocation new states to be created from the (then) Northwest Territory into free and slave state jurisdictions.
While Slave Nation is necessarily less detailed as it moves nearer in history from the time of the founders and framers, it certainly documents the truth that Lincoln so clearly admitted in his Second Inaugural Address: slavery was (and its relics are) a source of national guilt, not just a sin of the South. The revolutionary leaders from the North made a deliberate devil's bargain with the South as the incentive to a unified cause. That bargain created the principles held holy by the Confederate States in the 1860s and the Confederacy's conservative heirs in 2005.
The leaders and slaveholding class of the southern colonies in 1773, the year of the Somerset decision, had hoped for the integration of the colonies into Great Britain, with Americans taking their places in Parliament and the House of Lords. This is the meaning of "representation" in the phrase "no taxation without representation." After Somerset, that hope, if fulfilled, would have put the colonies under the Common Law, making slavery illegal. The Somerset ruling destroyed Southern hopes for union with Britain. It also, in part by describing slavery as an "odious" institution, warned of the eventual abolition of slavery in all the British colonies. Without Somerset (and the forces in Britain behind that view of slavery), the generally pro-Tory American South of the time would never have joined the Revolution.
Nor would the southern states have stayed in the United States without a constitution which protected their right to legislate the existence of slavery and defend the human property rights of slave owners. (An examination of the affirming decisions written in the Dred Scott decision of the Supreme Court as well as the writings showing the legal principles used to justify the secession of the states of the Confederacy in 1861 will show the "state's rights" element of the 1773 Somerset decision as a guiding common law principle permitting the states to create nationally enforceable property rights for human slavery.)
Slave Nation is an important book, long needed. It is a strong caution for those who might be misled by rhetoric which tries to sanctify the "intent of the framers" of the Constitution. The dark compromise made by politicians to protect their newborn and vulnerable country was a terrible price which was paid, not a guiding principle to be revered.
A work of painstakingly thorough scholarship combined with a thoroughly "reader friendly" text.......2005-09-06
Alfred W. Blumrosen is a law professor at Rutgers specializing in Labor and Employment law as it relates to civil rights enforcement, and the late Ruth G. Blumrosen was also a law professor with a history of civil rights compliance: the two have created a monumental survey in Slave Nation; How Slavery United The Colonies And Sparked The American Revolution. Slavery helped found the republic: when a 1772 London judge banned slavery in England, his edict rippled through the colonies and assured the southern states joined the northern colonies in the 'right for freedom' against England which was as much a fight for the freedom to have slaves as for other political concerns. A lively history ensues, pairing political decision processes with insights on the eventual war between the states, Slave Nation is a work of painstakingly thorough scholarship combined with a thoroughly "reader friendly" text that is completely accessible to the non-specialist general reader and a welcome, enthusiastically recommended addition to any personal, community, or school library American History collection or supplemental studies reading list.
Book Description
The brutal story of African slavery in the British colonies of the West Indies and North America is told with clarity and compassion in this classic history. James Walvin explores the experiences which bound together slaves from diverse African backgrounds and explains how slavery transformed the tastes and economy of the Western world.Although written for readers with no prior knowledge of the subject, Walvins's account is based on detailed scholarship, drawing on a body of work from the USA, the West Indies and Britain. All aspects of African slavery up to 1776 are covered; the situation of women, flight and rebellion, disease and death, the conditions on the slave ships, the abolition campaign and much more. The narrative is enlivened and personalised by frequent reference to individual lives.For this revised edition, the author has incorporated recent scholarly findings and updated the notes and bibliography in order to keep the book current.
Customer Reviews:
Great for reading and for school. .......2006-11-22
When taking my college class (Rise and fall of the British Empire), it did not talk enough about Slavery, only a few pages about it. This book gives a clear account of slavery during those times, from an overall view to the day to day lives of the slaves and their owners. It is a must read for anyone that does not know much about this issue.
Book Description
In February 1862, General Ambrose E. Burnside led Union forces to victory at the Battle of Roanoke Island. As word spread that the Union army had established a foothold in eastern North Carolina, slaves from the surrounding area streamed across Federal lines seeking freedom. By early 1863, nearly 1,000 refugees had gathered on Roanoke Island, working together to create a thriving community that included a school and several churches. As the settlement expanded, the Reverend Horace James, an army chaplain from Massachusetts, was appointed to oversee the establishment of a freedmen's colony there. James and his missionary assistants sought to instill evangelical fervor and northern republican values in the colonists, who numbered nearly 3,500 by 1865, through a plan that included education, small-scale land ownership, and a system of wage labor.
Time Full of Trial tells the story of the Roanoke Island freedmen's colony from its contraband-camp beginnings to the conflict over land ownership that led to its demise in 1867. Drawing on a wealth of primary sources, Patricia Click traces the struggles and successes of this long-overlooked yet significant attempt at building what the Reverend James hoped would be the model for "a new social order" in the postwar South.
Customer Reviews:
Perfect for the Scholar and Enthusiast Alike.......2001-09-24
As a novice Civil War Buff and North Carolina Historian, I found the book very comprehensive in its coverage of this interesting facet of Civil War, Reconstruction, and North Carolina history. Click focuses on a group of slave refugees set up in a freedmen's colony by Northern evangelists and Union military personnel and their struggle to survive in a post-slavery world. The book's rich detail is further strengthened by its ease of read and overall interestingness making it a true gem for someone researching or just looking for a good read.
Roanoke Island Colony of Freedmen.......2001-06-16
Even though I am a self-taught researcher of local and NC history and genealogies, I had not heard of this publication until I saw the author on PBS TV. I ordered the book from ... and am still in the process of reading it. It seems well documented and contains information I was not aware of until I read this book. I have helped two different African-American individuals research their families and so this subject was of interest to me. I recently was in court as a juror and was approached by a bystander who heard me describe my "line of work." I told her of this book and how she could obtain a copy. She said she would like to add this publication to her personal library of publications on Black Research. I purchased this book for our local historical/genealogical library so that it could be used by everyone doing black research. I ony live about 60 miles as the crow flies from Roanoke Island and had never heard of this Freedmen's Colony until now.
Book Description
This study is a thoughtful and important addition to an understanding of rural Texas and the nature of black settlements.
—
Journal of Southern History
"Thad Sitton and James H. Conrad have made an important contribution to African American and southern history with their study of communities fashioned by freedmen in the years after emancipation."
—
Journal of American History
"This book is the first of its kind....Blacks emerge as thinkers and actors on the stage; that is, they were not merely passive victims; rather, they made their own history by building their own communities and by becoming free farmers."
—James Smallwood, Professor Emeritus of History, Oklahoma State University
In the decades following the Civil War, nearly a quarter of African Americans achieved a remarkable victory—they got their own land. While other ex-slaves and many poor whites became trapped in the exploitative sharecropping system, these independence-seeking individuals settled on pockets of unclaimed land that had been deemed too poor for farming and turned them into successful family farms. In these self-sufficient rural communities, often known as "freedom colonies," African Americans created a refuge from the discrimination and violence that routinely limited the opportunities of blacks in the Jim Crow South.
Freedom Colonies is the first book to tell the story of these independent African American settlements. Thad Sitton and James Conrad focus on communities in Texas, where blacks achieved a higher percentage of land ownership than in any other state of the Deep South. The authors draw on a vast reservoir of ex-slave narratives, oral histories, written memoirs, and public records to describe how the freedom colonies formed and to recreate the lifeways of African Americans who made their living by farming or in skilled trades such as milling and blacksmithing. They also uncover the forces that led to the decline of the communities from the 1930s onward, including economic hard times and the greed of whites who found legal and illegal means of taking black-owned land. And they visit some of the remaining communities to discover how their independent way of life endures into the twenty-first century.
Customer Reviews:
Genealogist Researching My Roots.......2006-07-01
This book gave wonderful insight into the lives of African Americans after reconstruction. It helped me greatly in my research for genealogy purposes. We need more books of this nature to fill in the gaps of Black History.
An excellent, celebratory social history.......2005-03-15
Could it be that historians have overlooked 100 years of black American history after the Civil War? That's the premise of this excellent history about the development of "freedom colonies" in Texas (and throughout the South) by freed slaves seeking a piece of land to call their own. The authors have thoroughly explored a little documented phenomenon in Texas history, and presented the reader with an excellent reference unlike any you'll read anywhere else.
The possible reasons this chapter in African-American history are many, according to the book: maybe the essential "political incorrectness" of admitting the colonies were often begun with white benefactors and assiduously tended their separation from Jim Crow society. Also, because they purposely kept low profiles.
But whatever the reason, this bit of history shows that not all of the South was a primeval wasteland where Night Riders, exploitive plantation owners, and racists of all kinds were prowling the countryside, making life hell for freedmen. Without a doubt they did, and the misery of feudal sharecropping is real. But for as many as a quarter of freed slaves, the "freedom colonies" were the gateway to a new life, truly free from bondage, and a step toward complete (legal) equality 100 years later.
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