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Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America
written by Ira Berlin
Studio : Belknap Press
by Belknap Press
Publisher : Belknap Press
Released : 2000-03-04
Availability : Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Number of Items : 1
EAN : 9780674002111
Avg. Customer Rating: (based on 10 reviews)
List Price : $21.50
Our Price : $12.98
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Americancivilwar.com |
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When Americans look at slavery, they conjure up images of tired black bodies picking cotton from sunup to sundown under Southern skies. That image is partly true, but, as the noted history professor Ira Berlin details, the lives of slaves in America's racist system were complex and diverse. "Viewing slavery through the perspective of what slaves did most of the time," Berlin writes, "provides a means to draw some fundamental distinctions and find some essential commonalities among the various experiences of North America." Berlin reveals the color-caste codes of the Afro-Creoles of the Chesapeake, the survival of African culture in the South Carolina-Georgia-Florida coastal area, and the intermingling of Africans with French and Spanish in the Mississippi Delta area. He weaves a woeful and wondrous tale of the mores, occupations, conflicts, wars, and rebellions that made up the ongoing relationships between masters and slaves. Many Thousands Gone is an excellent companion to Philip D. Morgan's Slave Counterpoint, revealing the influence the "peculiar institution" of slavery had on those of African and European descent alike. --Eugene Holley Jr. |
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Product Description |
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Today most Americans, black and white, identify slavery with cotton, the deep South, and the African-American church. But at the beginning of the nineteenth century, after almost two hundred years of African-American life in mainland North America, few slaves grew cotton, lived in the deep South, or embraced Christianity. Many Thousands Gone traces the evolution of black society from the first arrivals in the early seventeenth century through the Revolution. In telling their story, Ira Berlin, a leading historian of southern and African-American life, reintegrates slaves into the history of the American working class and into the tapestry of our nation. Laboring as field hands on tobacco and rice plantations, as skilled artisans in port cities, or soldiers along the frontier, generation after generation of African Americans struggled to create a world of their own in circumstances not of their own making. In a panoramic view that stretches from the North to the Chesapeake Bay and Carolina lowcountry to the Mississippi Valley, Many Thousands Gone reveals the diverse forms that slavery and freedom assumed before cotton was king. We witness the transformation that occurred as the first generations of creole slaves--who worked alongside their owners, free blacks, and indentured whites--gave way to the plantation generations, whose back-breaking labor was the sole engine of their society and whose physical and linguistic isolation sustained African traditions on American soil. As the nature of the slaves' labor changed with place and time, so did the relationship between slave and master, and between slave and society. In this fresh and vivid interpretation, Berlin demonstrates that the meaning of slavery and of race itself was continually renegotiated and redefined, as the nation lurched toward political and economic independence and grappled with the Enlightenment ideals that had inspired its birth. (19991001) |
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A must read |
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A must read for students, but also a good read for the general history enthusiast. |
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Important Synthesis of Early Enslavement |
Ira Berlin in "Many Thousands Gone" has made a very important contribution to the growing literature attempting to understand both the big picture and the daily details of slavery. As his subtitle suggests, his work focuses on the first two centuries of slavery in North America.
Berlin's primary (and well-documented) thesis is that slave culture was not one monolithic culture, but several different cultures depending upon the era and the area of North American enslavement. Additionally, Berlin highlights that slavery was racist and classist, an interpretation which does not minimize the evils of racism, but also exposes the evils of classism.
Though in other works by the same author, readers find first-hand accounts of the horrors of slavery in the words of the enslaved, such documentation is less evident in this work. An increase in such documentation would have strengthened the already excellent "Many Thousand Gone." Still, the overall message and "feel" of "Many Thousands Gone" does accurately and powerfully depict the agony and inhumanity of African American slavery.
Berlin engages the important issue of the slave's choice of or refusal to choose the master's religion. Including a small sampling of the slave narratives (the majority of which evidence acceptance of Christianity) and the myriad slave conversion accounts, would have provided added depth to this fine book. Converting slaves, by their own accounts, did not see themselves as converting to their masters' religion. Instead, they saw themselves rejecting their masters' hypocritical distortion of Christianity and receiving Christ and Christianity, cleansed of lies and replete with the message of eternal freedom spirituality and internal freedom in Christ.
For the broad panorama of early enslavement, look no further than "Many Thousands Gone."
Reviewer: Bob Kellemen, Ph.D., is the author of Beyond the Suffering: Embracing the Legacy of African American Soul Care and Spiritual Direction , Soul Physicians, and Spiritual Friends. |
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Many Thousands Gone-na get mis-educated by Ira Berlin |
From my reading of Ira Berlin's work, one thing is apparent: Ira Berlin is a closet KKK member (maybe leader). Throughout his writing he minimizes the evils of slavery and emphasizes what few freedoms slaves enjoyed. He describes his academic style as more "nuanced" than the style of previous works on slavery in America. What he means by this is that he goes into minute detail about how at different times and in different places, slavery was more or less oppressive. All of that is obvious to anyone, because it occurs in every oppressive structure throughout history, but Berlin's tight focus on this detail makes one almost forget how horrid the institution was at all times, everywhere it was practiced.
Rather than write about the true history of slavery from the slave's perspective - the history of resistance and struggle to the death, Berlin describes slavery as being "negotiated" between slave and master, as if they were haggling over the price of a bagel. He consistently uses toned-down language to obscure the reality of what slavery was. He says that we cannot understand someone just by knowing that they were a slave - we cannot lump all slaves together. But what greater information can we know about someone than that their entire life revolves around the struggle to free him or herself of the whip of their master? Does it truly help us to nuance that understanding by knowing that at times, some lucky slaves were allowed to go to church, or to take breaks from work, or to get only 20 lashes instead of 50?
Unfortunately for history students, Berlin has become widely respected among many historians, which just goes to show how deeply racist America continues to be. |
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Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America |
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Brought for college class. Arrived in excellent condition. Purchased new book at great price. Better then campus store prices. |
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American Slavery Was Local |
The myth of slavery derives from the powerful images of the miniseries Roots; the notion that black people were simply swept out of their African lives, degraded and sometimes killed on the harsh way to America and then put to work on a cotton plantation without power of any sort.
Ira Berlin, in this beautifully written and thoroughly researched history of the first two hundred years of American slavery, "Many Thousands Gone", blows apart that myth. He says that slavery had great variety, based on geographic, economic and generational factors. The first generation of slaves in America were creoles, born of white and African American parents. They frequently lived along the sea and interacted with people of all walks of life, were traders and often spoke multiple languages. These slaves frequently stayed with their families, knew and utilized the courts to petition for freedom, they worked with their slave-owners to grow crops and to negotiate payment for their eventual freedom. This changed with subsequent generations who were plucked from central Africa and did not have the same experience with the white world. While slaves in these subsequent generations lost the power to negotiate the terms of their slavery with their slaveholders, they were able to grab autonomy in other ways. They grew and sold goods in cities, they purchased their freedom, though often at a high price. They escaped and formed maroon armed communities.
A few other factors also played a significant role in determining the virulence of slavery, specifically geography and economics. Some crops like cotton and tobacco were well suited to the plantation systems and in areas where those crops grew well, the slave system was particularly harsh. History was another factor. In the form of the American Revolution it disrupted the plantation system, because the plantation owners, who were often patriots with strong beliefs in the rights of man, also owned slaves and defended their right to do so. The loyalists took advantage of this dilemma and often had the plantation slaves fighting on the loyalist side in exchange for the promise of becoming free men. Sometimes they even delivered on that promise.
My only criticism is that I wanted more of a narrative that would bring together the various aspects of slavery. I was left with the feeling that American slavery was really Mississippi slavery or South Carolina slavery or New York slavery. The legacy of slavery appears to be monolithic even if the experience of slavery was not.
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