Product Description

Beginning with the Colonial period, progressing through the Revolution and the Antebellum period, the book chronologically documents the historical evolution of slavery in the USA

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #130227 in Books
• Published on: 1995-02-23
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 320 pages

About the Author
Peter Kolchin is Professor of History at the University of Delaware. Winner of the Bancroft Prize in American history, his other books include Unfree Labor: American Slavery and Russian Serfdom and A Sphinx on American Land.

Customer Reviews

OUTSTANDING!
It is impossible to over-state just what a superb book this is. Peter Kolchin covers the entire scope of slavery in America from its colonial origins to its destruction following the Civil War and everything else in between in an accessible and highly readable manner. From a casual, passing interest, right up to degree-level, "American Slavery" is nothing less than essential to anyone wanting to understand the 'peculiar institution'.

A few omissions, but overall a good account

Slavery runs, like a gash, through the story of America, painful and unavoidable. Recent histories of the United States have underlined this fact clearly: Schama's The American Future, Kagan's Dangerous Nation, Thomas Bender's slightly older A Nation Among Nations. The election of Barack Obama is remarkable because of this particular aspect of history and its legacy.

Peter Kolchin's American Slavery isolates the subject itself, concentrating not upon slavery within the context of other American History but on slavery as the context itself.

Starting with the early colonial days, Kolchin traces the development of the slave economy in the US, using as points of comparison slavery in the rest of the Americas and serfdom in Russia. Bringing together many strands, the author admits from the outset that he has inevitably, within the space of less than 250 pages, sacrificed detail for a broad brush picture. This is very noticeable, and some of the omissions are, to this reviewer, very strange, and require only a scan of the index to spot.

For example, neither the battles of Antietam, the "winning" of which emboldened Lincoln to issue the Proclamation of Emancipation, or of Gettysburg, which broke the back of the Confederacy, gets a mention, and the Underground Railroad, by which southern blacks escaped to non-slaving states in the north, is over and done with after a couple of paragraphs. The annexation of Texas, the driver for which Kagan has given as a desire by slavers for an increase in the number of slaving states for political purposes, bears no comment at all.

The account is not without controversy. For example, commenting on slave numbers, Kolchin notes the discrepancy between the US and the rest of the Americas, the former having a far higher survival rate than the latter. In A Splendid Exchange, William Bernstein has attributed this to the prevalence of sugar as a cash crop outside the US, the processing of which was physically demanding in the extreme, and consequently claimed many lives and therefore the constant need to replenish stocks of slaves. Kolchin, on the other hand, attributes it to traditional two-year breast-feeding periods, which in the rest of the Americas he believes suppressed fertility rates. Bernstein seems to have the stronger case here, but he may have the advantage of an extra decade and a half of research to build upon - Kolchin's work was done in the early 1990s.

What the book does do is give a joined up view of the "slavery experience", and it's no subject for a theme park. The lives of slaves were often brutal, always demeaning, and constantly subject to the whim of their masters down to the minutest level, to the point where their marital status, children's names, and religious practices were often decided for them. There were regular beatings, the work was often back-breaking, and brothers, sisters, wives, husbands were shuffled around the board like pawns, family members often being sold to new masters never again to be seen by spouses, parents or siblings. Whilst there sometimes developed a bond of sorts between masters and "their people", that did not preclude any of this treatment. He notes the hypocrisy of a political system supposedly based on liberty and equality which simultaneously supported slavery as an institution, and singles out revolutionary figures such as George Washington, who granted manumission to his own slaves only in his will, not whilst he was living.

Post-bellum, though nominally free, life remained anything but straightforward for ex-slaves. Nevertheless, for a while at least things were much improved, and they celebrated their new-found liberties, sometimes in simple ways like having a lie-in and entering towns formerly off-limits. However, the old power relationships endured, and it would be another century before the benefits of abolition were truly experienced, and a further four decades before the symbolic election of a black president.

Kolchin relates the story well, and though there are some omissions the balance sheet is firmly in his favour. No one book, even if there was no ongoing research, is ever likely to cover all of the bases, but what this one does is fills in many of the gaps left by others.

A deficient account of a horrifying event in history
American Slavery by Peter Kolchin
Peter Kolchin has tried to look at the "peculiar institution" in a perspective that is supposed to add further depth on the subject matter.
Describing American Slavery as an "embarrassment" does not capture the real loss, the horror and suffering which was the very essence of American Slavery. The portrayal of the great tragedy that was American Slavery is not in-depth but extremely flat and one dimensional. Because of the lack of insight from the slave's perspective, this historical event seems to be watered-down for consumption. Hence the integrity of the author is in question.
Peter Kolchin has tried to examine American Slavery in a global context by comparing it with slavery in the Americas i.e. Jamaica and Brazil and to some extent, Russian Serfdom but missing out contemporary slavery in other parts of the world. If Peter Kolchin was trying to place American Slavery in a global context he has failed miserably. If comparisons were made of American Slavery with slavery in the Islamic world, within the Ottoman Empire it would have and would become clear that American Slavery in comparison, was more than an "embarrassment" but one of the greatest 'shames' imposed on the world by America; a humanitarian catastrophe. Peter Kolchin missed the opportunity to describe in detail the volume of atrocities perpetrated by the civilised white European settler.
Although the book is supposed to be in-depth, there are numerous gaps in the book for example, stating that the positive attributes of the African American is almost explicitly linked to European influence is completely irresponsible. Peter Kolchin should have emphasised the fact that the African slaves created an existence for themselves with remarkable determination despite the obstacles, the severe hardships placed on them by the civilised White American; that the resilience and resistance of the African slave, a resistance to accepting the enforced circumstances by the civilised White American, the African Americans have maintained a struggle for their own independence, a struggle that has lasted for four hundred years.
Peter Kolchin has stated that the role of the slave master or slave owner was contradictory, caught between a benevolent paternalistic duty towards the slave and a duty to whip the slave into subservience. The paternalistic slave owner felt obliged to civilise the slave by "interfering" in his life in all matters. While on the other side of the dualistic role the slave owner felt the obligation to ensure the man was whipped and tortured into performing his role as a slave, constantly reminded of his inferiority as a slave and savage; the slave owner's approach was brutal and absolute, ensuring the master role was made clear. It seems that the reader is supposed to feel sympathetic for the slave owner who is playing this dual role, set in unfair circumstances and those circumstances have been created by the African Slave; and the slave is responsible for inflicting that anguish on the slave owner; the White American is then made out to be the victim. Reading this book it is very hard to distinguish between the true victim and the criminal. It would be like trying to make a case for the abusive father as a victim, who physically abuses his child. Are we to be convinced that the child has inflicted a crime against the father? It is the slave who is the victim (but then again I could be wrong according to this book).
The Persians were conquered and subdued many times by peoples who had there own cultures, the Greeks, Arabs and the Mongols, and the Persians always managed to keep their own identity culture and language, in return influencing and subduing the invaders with their own native culture, language, literature etc. This would suggest that the Persian culture had a strong solid foundation that engulfed the invading foreign culture. Alexander the Great was so overwhelmed by the indigenous culture he 'went native. Similarly, although the Europeans had some influence on the African slave, Peter Kolchin should have made it clear that the African American like the Persian maintained his own identity, that would go back to the roots in Africa, carved out a specific African American culture, a culture that White America today is trying to emulate, influencing not just the 'Americans' but the global community.
The African Americans lost their original culture and language due to the ingenious European who kept the African slaves, who spoke the same languages and were from the same part of African continent, apart and separate from each other when they arrived in America as slaves. This was done to suppress any possible future insurrections or rebellions. This fact was completely ignored by Peter Kolchin. It seems that Peter Kolchin is trying to state that the African American identity has been created by the White European Slave Masters and the African Americans today are indebted to the White American and that they should be, as former savages, grateful for being civilised by the White American; that slavery in the new world was the salvation for the African.
Peter Kolchin has not captured the stark brutality and reality of American Slavery in this book. Peter Kolchin has not captured the brutality and the horrors perpetrated by the European and indeed the so-called civilised White America.
The book ends with, "And in the years after World War II, again with help of the white allies, they spearheaded a "second Reconstruction". To get a more accurate picture of the White American, African Slavery and indeed the African American Peter Kolchin should have stated "the African Americans have survived the horrors of American Slavery; maintained their pride and dignity despite the obstacles placed by the civilised White Americans, and are continuing to fighting racism, bigotry and continuing to struggle for equality and justice".
Reading this book it is very clear that Peter Kolchin has taken a Eurocentric stance. This interpretation of American Slavery seems contrived and deficient in actual experience and detail which in turn serves no justice to the subject of American Slavery.