About the Book
Table of Contents:
Part I: Global approaches
1 Defining slavery in global perspective (David Lewis, University of Edinburgh, UK)
2 Writing global histories of slavery (Michael Zeuske, University of Cologne, Germany, University of Bonn, Germany, Universidad de la Habana, Cuba)
3 Slavery and empire (Trevor Burnard, University of Hull, UK)
4 The 'Great Divergence': Slavery, capitalism and world-economy, (Dale Tomich, Binghamton University, USA)
5 Approaches to global antislavery (Seymour Drescher, University of Pittsburgh, USA)
6 Comparative and transnational histories of slavery (Enrico Dal Lago, National University of Ireland Galway, Ireland)
Part II: Themes and methods
7 Political and legal histories of slavery (Sue Peabody, Washington State University, USA)
8 Writing national histories of slavery (Lewis Eliot, University of Oklahoma, USA)
9 Writing the religious history of the enslaved in the Atlantic World (Matt D. Childs, University of South Carolina, USA)
10 What historians of slavery write about when we write about race, (Jacqueline Jones, University of Texas at Austin, USA)
11 Gender history and slavery (David Stefan Doddington, Cardiff University, UK)
12 Dispossessed lives: Enslaved women, violence, and the archive, (Marisa J. Fuentes, Rutgers University, USA with an introduction from Elizabeth Maeve Barnes, University of Reading, UK)
13 Slavery, postcolonialism and the colonial archive, (Andrea Major, University of Leeds, UK)
14 Imagining slavery in Roman antiquity (K.R. Bradley, University of Notre Dame, USA)
15 Quantitative histories of slavery, (Andrea Livesey, Liverpool John Moores University, UK)
16 Psychohistory and slavery, (Patrick H. Breen, Providence College, USA)
17 Material culture, archaeology and slavery, (Lydia Wilson Marshall, DePauw University, USA)
18 Slavery and the cultural turn, (Raquel Kennon, California State University, Northridge, USA)
19 Re-tooling memory and memory tools: America's ongoing re-memory of slavery, (Marcus Wood, University of Sussex, UK)
About the Author :
David Stefan Doddington is Senior Lecturer in North American History at Cardiff University, UK
Enrico Dal Lago is Professor of American History at National University of Ireland, Galway, UK
Review :
This is a fascinating volume on the historiography of slavery. It has interesting chapters on how historians have approached the global history of slavery and concepts such as empire, capitalism and antislavery. The book also deals with the methods and perspectives historians have used to explore slavery, including race, gender and memory. A valuable and important collection.
This is the best collection of studies on the historiography, methodologies and theoretical approaches to the comparative and transnational histories of slavery. The approaches are discussed in general terms followed by excellent illustrative studies. Doddington and Dal Lago deserve high praise for the expertise and thoroughness of their selection, organization and editing of chapters that are all very informative. The authors cover their assigned areas thoroughly and accessibly, offering clear views of their specialties in styles that are often lively and inviting. The work will be indispensable for both specialists interested in alternate approaches, researchers new to the study of slavery, and teachers and students seeking context and greater depth in their study of the many cutting edge histories of the world's slaveries.
Important reading for anyone interested in writing about slavery and its historiographical traditions, this is a hugely ambitious and multifaceted book featuring interpretations of slavery by a number of historians writing from diverse historiographical, intellectual and analytical perspectives. Deliberately spanning wide chronological and geographical contexts, the authors included reflect upon a variety of theoretical, thematic and methodological approaches for exploring slavery.
Writing the History of Slavery is a must-read for students and specialists of the history of slavery. This important book provides an accessible examination of the methodological challenges historians of slavery have been and are still confronted to and how the multifarious methods implemented to overcome them have influenced the historiography of slavery.
