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The spread of slavery in the antebellum period and the subsequent emancipation of some four million slaves as a result of the Civil War reflected changes sweeping the entire Atlantic basin during the nineteenth century. This broad-ranging study examines the origins, growth, and demise of slavery in ...

The spread of slavery in the antebellum period and the subsequent emancipation of some four million slaves as a result of the Civil War reflected changes sweeping the entire Atlantic basin during the nineteenth century. This broad-ranging study examines the origins, growth, and demise of slavery in the upcountry South. Focusing on a representative cotton plantation region, central Georgia, Joseph Reidy assesses these historical changes within the larger context of capitalist development in the North and the abolition of slavery elsewhere in the Americas. Reidy's analysis illuminates the complex interplay between global economic developments and the lives of ordinary southerners, black and white. The shifting pattern of struggle among evolving social classes provides the key. Unlike other scholars who have focused more or less exclusively on planters, on slaves, or on yeomen, Reidy explores the interaction among these and other classes over time in order to achieve a comprehensive understanding ofthe nineteenth-century South. Covering both the antebellum and post-bellum periods, the narrative pays special attention to how African Americans shaped their own lives as well as influenced larger historical processes - for, as Reidy points out, they were agents of historical change rather than purely objects or victims of that change.

In the only scholarly treatment of Bahamian socio-economic history in post-emancipation years, Johnson begins by examining the last phase of slavery as one element in the foundation of later, and often more exploitative, labor systems. Looking at both urban and rural slave populations, Johnson ...

In the only scholarly treatment of Bahamian socio-economic history in post-emancipation years, Johnson begins by examining the last phase of slavery as one element in the foundation of later, and often more exploitative, labor systems. Looking at both urban and rural slave populations, Johnson discusses the systems of slave hire, apprenticeship, and indenture and highlights the ways in which the people of the Bahamas formed a proto-peasantry, often exerting more autonomy and power as slaves than as a "free" people. Following emancipation in 1838, export economies of cotton, salt, sponges, and pineapples spawned coercive credit and truck systems, which bolstered the dominance of a white mercantile elite that would exercise control until the early 1960s. Various government policies further perpetuated a "machinery of class slavery", making migration (primarily to Key West, and later to Miami) one of the few escape routes available to the lower classes. Throughout, Johnson relates historical movements and events in the Bahamas to those in neighboring Caribbean islands, Latin America, and the United States, making this an important source book for all Caribbeanists. It will also be of interest to scholars of the historiography of slavery in the Americas and the transition from slavery to freedom - or, in a post-emancipation system of domination like that of the Bahamas - from slavery to servitude.