Edited by Professor of Economics and History Stanley Engerman, Seymour Drescher and Robert Paquette
This new Reader draws on a range of documentary sources to show the origins, history, and realities of slavery and the slave trade. Exploring the economic, cultural, and political role of slavery, the volume shows the similarities as well as the differences in different times and places. While
focusing primarily on the Americas, the volume extends to a consideration of slavery in other societies in the classical world, Africa, Asia, and the contemporary world. With over 150 selections, varying from one paragraph to several pages in length, the volume ranges widely, from international
slave trade regulations and the individual records of slaveowners, to legislative debate concerning the emancipation of slaves. The volume aims to show the diversity of human experiences of slavery, and explains the causes of both the ending as well as the origins of slavery. Covering many aspects
of slavery, the volume considers the ways in which slavery has been justified and attacked, the operations of slave societies, and the experiences of those living in them. Selections are drawn from a wide variety of sources, such as biblical and philosophical discussions, the writings of slaves,
slaveowners, abolitionists, economists, lawyers, and historians. In addition, the volume includes selections from many leading historians and economists studying slavery and emancipation.
Introduction
Meaning
The Bible
Aristotle: Politics
Aristotle: Ethics
Cicero: De Officis
Thomas Hobbes: Leviathan
Baron de Montesquieu: Spirit of the Laws
Jean Bodin: The Six Books of a Commonweale
Francois Voltaire: A Philosophical
Dictionary
Denis Diderot: Encyclopedie
Thomas Jefferson: Notes on the State of Virginia
Immanuel Kant: Science of Right
Juan Francisco Manzano: Letter to Domingo del Monte, 25 June 1835
Friedrich Neitzsche: Beyond Good and Evil
Jerome Blum: Lord and Peasant in
Russia
David Brion Davis: The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Revolution, 1770-1823
Eugene D. Genovese: Roll, Jordan, Roll
Sir Moses I. Finley: Ancient Slavery and Modern Ideology
Richard Hellie: Slavery in Russia 1405-1725
Pierre Bonnassie: From Slavery to Feudalism in
South-Western Europe
Paul Freedom: The Origins of Peasant Servitude in Medieval Catalonia
David A. E. Pelteret: Slavery in Early Medieval England
Suzanne Miers and Igor Kopytoff: Slavery in Africa
John Thornton: Africa and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World
The
Origins and Methods of Enslavement
The Bible
St. Augustine: The City of God
Bishop Ratherius of Verona: Praeloquia 935-937 AD
James Boswell: Life of Johnson
H.J. Nieboer: Slavery as an Industrial System
Winthrop D. Jordan: White over Black
Edmund S. Morgan: American
Slavery, American Freedom
Richard Hellie: Slavery in Russia
Orlando Patterson: Slavery and Social Death
Bernard Lewis: Race and Color in Islam
Fields: Slavery, Race, Ideology
John Thornton: Africa and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World
David Eltis: Europeans and the
Rise and Fall of Slavery
Slave Laws
The Bible
Digest of Justinian
Richard Hellie: Muscovite Society
Richard Hellie: The Reign of Sovereign
Code Noir 1685
William Blackstone: Commentaries on the Laws of England
Thomas D. Morris: Southern Slavery and the Law
1619-1860
Danish Slave Code 1733
Codigo Negro 1789
Cuban Slave Law 1842
Somersett Decision 1772
Barbados Laws: Excerpts from 1661
Rio Branco Law 1871
Joaquim Nabuco: Abolitionism: The Brazilian Antislavery Struggle
T.R. Cobb: An Inquiry into the Law of Negro Slavery
(1858)
Massachusetts Code 1641
Virginia Code 1705
The Babylonian Laws
The Koran
The Slave Trade
Elizabeth Donnan: Documents Illustrative of the Slave Trade to America
John Newton: The Journal of a Slave Trader 1750-4
Ottobah Cugoano: Thoughts and Sentiments on
the Evil of Slavery (1787)
Parliamentary Papers
Jean Baptist Labat: Nouveau Voyage
Olaudah Equiano: The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano
Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton: The African Slave Trade and its Remedy
Hamoa: Cuba-Chinese 1812 Contract
Marchesa Iris Origo:
The Merchant of Prato
Philip D. Curtin: The Atlantic Slave Trade: A Census
Martin Klein: Woolf and Sereer of Senegambia
Herbert S. Klein: The Middle Passage
David Eltis: (Forthcoming on total slave trade)
James L. Watson: Transactions in People: The Chinese Market in Slaves,
Servants, and Heirs
Philip D. Curtin: Abolition of the Slave Trade from Senegambia
David Murray: Odious Commerce: Britain, Spain, and the abolition of the Cuban Slave Trade
Paul E. Lovejoy: Transformations in Slavery
Alfons van der Kraan: Bali: Slavery and the Slave Trade
David
W. Galenston: Traders, Planters, and Slaves
David Eltis: Economic Growth and the Ending of the Transatlantic Slave Trade
Herbert S. Klein: Economic Aspects of the Eighteenth-Century Atlantic Slave Trade
Ruth Mazo Karras: Slavery and Society in Medieval Scandinavia
Clive Moore,
Jaqueline Leckie and Doug Munro: Labour in the South Pacific
Stuart Schwartz: Sugar Plantations in the Formation of Brazilian Society
Robert William Fogel: Without Consent or Contract
Ch'ing-Hwang Yen: Coolies and Mandarins
Claude Meillassoux: The Anthropology of
Slavery
Flourishing Business ('The Economist' 21.09.1996)
Olivia Remie Constable: Trade and Traders in Muslim Spain
Michel Le Gall: Slavery in the Islamic Middle East
The Experience of Slavery
Life of St Balthid
Mary Prince: History of Mary Prince
James Henry
Hammond: Plantation Manual of James Hammond
David Walker: Appeal
Frederick Douglass: My Bondage and My Freedom
Thomas Affleck: Cotton Plantation Book: Duties of Overseers
Debien: Night-Time Meetings
Mederic Louis Elie Moreau de Saint Mery: Description
C.L.R. James: The Black
Jacobins
Gilberto Freyre: The Masters and the Slaves
Sidney W. Mintz and Richard S. Prince: The Birth of African-American Culture
Kenneth F. Kiple: Another Dimension to the Black Diaspora
Plantation Slaves
Mary Karasch: Slave Life in Rio de Janeiro 1808-1850
Women in
China
B.W. Higman: Slave Populations of the British Caribbean
Eugene D. Genovese: Roll, Jordan, Roll
Robert W. Fogel: Without Consent or Contract
Peter Kolchin: Unfree Labour
Elizabeth Fox-Genovese: Within the Plantation Household
Allan Kulikoff: Tobacco and Slaves
Philp
D. Morgan: Slave Counterpoint
St. Vincent Interview
Resistance
Plato: Laws
Aristotle: Politics
Tacitus: Annals
Plutarch: Lives of Noble Grecians and Romas
Jarir al-Tabari: History of Al-Tabari
The Church and Black Slaves in Santo Domingo
Gonzalo Fernandez
de Ovieto: Historia General y natural de las Indias
Robert Conrad: Children of God's Fire
The Colonial Records of the State of Georgia
Curacao (London Magazine 1750)
Douglas Hall: In Miserable Slavery
John Gabriel Stedman: Narrative of a Five Years expedition against the Revolted
Negroes of Surinam
George F. Tyson: Great Lives Observed: Toussaint L'Ouverture
Stuart Schwartz: HAHR
Monituer dela Louisiane
Samuel Hambleton: Hambelton Letter
British Parliamentary Papers: Correspondence relating to Slavery and the Abolition of the Slave Trade 1823-4
John
Oliver Killens: The Trial of Denmark Vesey
Cuban Resistance
Confession of Nat Turner
Henry Bleby: Death Struggles of Slavery
Herbert Aptheker: American Negro Slave Revolts
Sidney W. Mintz: Journal of World History
Eugene D. Genovese: Roll, Jordan, Roll
Eugene D. Genovese:
From Rebellion to Revolution
Joao Jose Reis and P.F. de Moreas Faria: Islam and Slave Rebellion in Bahia, Brazil
Michael Craton: Testing the Chains
David Barry Gaspar: Bondsmen and Rebels
Frederick Douglass: My Bondage and My Freedom
Araham Lincoln: Cooper Union Talk
1860
Robert L. Paquette: Slave Resistance and Social History
Jonathan Glassman: Feast and Riot on the Swahili Coast
David Geggus: A Turbulent Time
Richardson Correspondence 1848
James Scott: Domination and the Arts of Resistance
Economics and Demography
Xenophon:
Oeconomicus
Aristotle: Oeconomica
Francois Chevalier: Instructions to the Jesuits
Edward Gibbon Wakefield: A View of the Art of Colonization
Herman Merivale: Lectures on Colonization and Colonies
B.W. Higman: Slave Populations
Robert W. Fogel: Without Consent or
Contract
Stuart Schwartz: Sugar Plantations in the Formation of Brazilian Society
Slave Trader Newsletter
Slave Trade Advertisement 1861
Adam Smith: Wealth of Nations
Frederic Bastiat: Economic Sophisms
J.S. Mill: The Negro Question
J.S. Mill: Principles of Political
Economy
James Stuart: An Inquiry into the Priciples of Politcal Oeconomy
Karl Marx: Capital
Max Weber: The Theory of Social and Economic Organization
Eric Williams: Capitalism and Slavery
Walter Rodney: How Europe Underdeveloped Africa
Manuel Moreno Fraginals: The
Sugarmill
Evsey D. Domar: The Causes of Slavery or Serfdom: A Hypothesis
Patrick Manning: Slavery and African Life
Michel Le Gall: Slavery in the Islamic Middle East
Abolition and Emancipation
Sir Moses I. Finley: Ancient and Modern Ideology
Seymour Drescher:
Capitalism and Anti-Slavery
Alexis de Toqueville and Beaumont: On Social Reform
Hansard 1843
Hansard 1846
Thomas Carlyle: The Nigger Question
Edmund Ruffin: The Diary of Edmund Ruffin
Mississippi Legislature 1850
Black Abolitionist Papers vol. V
Thomas Wentworth
Higginson: Army Life in a Black Regiment
Emancipation Proclamation 1863
Thirteenth Amendment
Rebecca J. Scott: Defining the Boundaries of Freedom in the World of Cane
The Liberator 1831
Paris Ethnological Society Debate 1847
Resolution of 1784
General Assembly Virginia
1785
4c Extract from 'The Economist' (1997)
There are no Instructor/Student Resources available at this time.
Stanley L. Engerman is Professor of Economics and History at the University of Rochester, NY. His publications include 'The Colonial Era', volume I of 'The Cambridge Economic History of the United States' (edited with Robert Gallman, 1996). Robert Paquette is Professor of History at Hamilton
College, Clinton, NY. He is the author of 'Sugar is Made with Blood: The Conspiracy of La Escalera and the Conflict between Empires over Slavery in Cuba' (1998). Seymour Drescher is Professor of History and Sociology at the University of Pittsburgh. His publications include 'The Meaning of Freedom:
Economics, Politics and Culture after Slavery' (1992).
Writing History - William Kelleher Storey and Towser Jones
