"Many Thousands Gone."..is a sweeping scholarly study of four kinds
of slave society...those in the Northern colonies, the Chesapeake
Bay area, the Carolina low country, and the lower Mississippi
valley...One of Mr. Berlin's most striking realizations....[was
how] slaves had had such different experiences of slavery. Some had
been skilled laborers, others small farmers, still others
plantation workers...'What Ira has done is to etch the patterns, '
says Ronald Hoffman, director of the Omohundro Institute of Early
American History and Culture, in Williamsburg, Virginia. 'He's
developed a model of how slavery changed that's going to be
enormously important'...More than just highlighting diversity, the
patterns that Mr. Berlin draws in his scholarship also throw into
relief changes in the nature of slavery...Eric Foner, a professor
of history at Columbia University, says, 'In a way that no one else
has done, Berlin takes the entire area of what became the United
States and gives us a genu
"Many Thousands Gone" is an imaginatively conceived, brilliantly
executed academic history of the experience of African-Americans,
from their arrival in Jamestown in 1619, through the early decades
of the nineteenth century. With clarity and sympathetic attention,
Berlin depicts how, with regional and historical variations, blacks
in North America employed a variety of stratagems to confront
modify, ameliorate, and even surmount their degraded condition as
slaves...Berlin's knowledge of slave life in America is little
short of encyclopedic. On virtually every page he illuminates how
and to what extent African-Americans in different times and places
strove "to negotiate" the terms of their servitude with their
masters...This book seems destined to define the terms of
discussion for many years to come.--Haim Chertok "Jerusalem Post
"
"Many Thousands Gone" is an investigation of the ways in which
freedom and slavery were negotiated between slaves and slave
owners, making the point that no matter how powerful the slave
owner became, the culture and the actions of the slave were never
completely in his power. Thus, the history of slavery becomes, in
part, a history of strategies--some partial failures, some partial
successes--for establishing African American self-determination in
a time of slavery...By beginning with the assumption that slavery
was not one thing but was instituted and experienced in a variety
of distinct ways, "Many Thousands Gone" allows readers to glimpse a
more nuanced picture of the strivings and accomplishments of the
souls and bodies caught in slavery's meshes, enriching rather than
compromising the understanding of the institution's true harmful
nature.--Thomas Cassidy "Magill's Literary Annual "
"Many Thousands Gone" will challenge just about everything you
thought you knew about slavery, especially its dawning...Through
this honest and responsible work, perhaps we can begin decoding our
Pavlovian responses to the buried racial and experiential triggers
we dare not analyze.--Debra Dickerson "Village Voice "
["Many Thousands Gone"] is a serious study that the general public
will find interesting and useful...As an introduction to the new
history of slavery in North America, especially in the long era
prior to the 'Old South, ' one could do little better than to buy
this book.--Douglas B. Chambers "The Commercial Appeal "
[Berlin presents] a full-scale interpretation of the complexity and
diversity of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century African-American
slave life and work. His five-hundred-page book, "Many Thousands
Gone", is the most comprehensive study yet produced of the first
two centuries of slavery in North America. Berlin is, of course,
well qualified for his ambitious task, for he has spent his entire
career studying American slavery and facilitating the work of other
scholars in this field...Berlin has his own distinctive argument,
which endows the book with originality and power.--Richard S.
Dunn"William and Mary Quarterly" (10/01/1999)
[Berlin] draws on recent scholarship to sketch in the contours of
the slave experience in colonial Florida and Louisiana, reminding
us that the ancestors of many black Americans learned to speak
Spanish or French long before they ever heard English. Berlin
paints deftly with a broad brush, and his trim narrative is
informed and gripping...Berlin documents the high hopes for
freedom, the desperate attempts to gain liberty, and the deep sense
of disappointment and betrayal that led slaves to form conspiracies
from Richmond, Virginia to Pointe Coupee, Louisiana.--Peter H. Wood
"Brightleaf "
[Top 10 Pick for 1998, Nonfiction Category, "Christian Science
Monitor"][This is] a monumental, sweeping study of the evolution of
America's "peculiar institution" from the earliest white settlement
through the early Republic period. Berlin, one of the foremost
historians of American slavery, has written an addition to the
canon of essential works on the subject..."Many Thousands Gone"
makes clear that slavery at no point achieved the "stable maturity"
that many historians have ascribed to the 19th century
period.--Neal M. Rosendorf "Christian Science Monitor "
A noted historian with other books on slavery, Mr. Berlin focuses
in this latest work on what slavery meant during the 1600s and
1700s. And one of his major points, carefully documented and
argued, is that slavery and race then were not always what we think
of them as being now...What's refreshing about his analysis is how
many layers of African-American life he is able to penetrate.
Drawing upon Dutch, French, Spanish and English documents, he looks
globally at how the African diaspora of slaves shaped North
American communities.--Meta G. Carstarphen "Dallas Morning News
"
An original, eye-opening study in which Berlin most persuasively
argues that slavery was no monolithic institution but one that
evolved in different ways in different places, and did not become
the 'slave society' so well known to students of American history
until relatively late in its long, painful development.--Jonathan
Yardley "Washington Post Book World "
As Ira Berlin makes abundantly clear, racism was an ideology
crucial for creating an intellectual and emotional climate that
would allow slavery to exist. It gave an institution, albeit a
"peculiar" one, the required veneer of "reason..".Berlin explodes
several myths and sets in their place a history that honors the
complexity of the American past with an unswerving, unsentimental
gaze. One myth that Berlin seizes is that of the Old South, the
common belief that slavery was for the most part situated below the
Mason-Dixon Line. Slavery became a southern phenomenon only after
200 years of American history. These 200 years are Berlin's
subject, as he tracks the black presence throughout early America,
emphasizing in vivid detail the diversity of slave existence, urban
and rural. He underscores the fact that as America was being
constructed by slave labor, slaves were living their own lives and
creating their own culture, a syncretic mix of African
origins...Berlin's argument, and it is b
Berlin crafts a deft synthesis of the many regional studies that
have slowly been changing our understanding of slavery...No one
before Berlin has made sense of these works altogether, as a
unified field of inquiry. There is originality in Berlin's
synthesis, as historical events and cultural tendencies take on new
and fresh meanings. Further, his distillation of the burgeoning
field is highly valuable. It is a brilliant summary for general
readers and newcomers to the field; it will be a standard work for
graduate students preparing for exams, and many a burdened faculty
member who needs a quick overview in order to prepare lectures will
dog-ear its pages.--Joyce E. Chaplin "Reviews in American History
"
Berlin has written an imaginative, detailed account of American
slavery from its origins at the beginning of the 17th century
through the Revolution...A major contribution to the study of
slavery in the United States.--Anthony O. Edmonds "Library Journal
"
Berlin offers a complex picture of how slaves etched out small
freedoms under dire circumstances in early America. Their existence
was defined by religion, family structure and African
inheritance--not just the fact that they were slaves. "Many
Thousands Gone" is not an apology for slavery, but a testament to
the willpower of a people to define their own lives under the most
dismal conditions.--Ronald D. Lankford "Roanoke Times "
Berlin, who has already contributed significantly to the
literature, here brings together in a magisterial synthesis much of
what has now been learned about slave life during its first two
centuries within the present United States...Berlin's achievement
is to order the resulting variety by identifying four different
regions with four different economies (the Chesapeake, the eastern
tidewater from South Carolina to Florida, the Mississippi Valley,
and the North) and by dividing the social developments of two
centuries in each region into three periods, which he designates as
the charter generations, the plantation generations, and the
Revolutionary generations, stopping short of the heyday of slavery
in the antebellum decades of the nineteenth century.--Edmund S.
Morgan "New York Review of Books "
Berlin's adept mixture of economic and social history enlarges our
understanding of colonial slavery and contributes fascinating new
insights...[N]ovel insights permeate nearly every
page...Authoritative, original, beautifully organized and composed,
"Many Thousands Gone" is a striking combination of black history
and the study of the evolution of slavery.--Graham Russell Hodges
"America "
Berlin's study is the best account we have of the beginnings of
servitude in America. It is also a reminder of slavery's
adaptability. The notion that it was necessarily tied to the
production of export staples is false.--Howard Temperley "Times
Literary Supplement "
In "Many Thousands Gone", Ira Berlin has produced an intriguing and
compelling new interpretation that is one of the most significant
books about slavery in several years...Berlin's work is an
impressive and masterfully written narrative. He provides a clearer
picture of slavery, which has often been clouded by imprecise
accounts. As he astutely concludes, slavery's effects still persist
as an unwelcome guest in American society.--John A. Hardin
"Lexington Herald Leader "
In "Many Thousands Gone", Ira Berlin tells the complex and
neglected story of American slavery from 1619 through about 1810.
It is a story most Americans do not know...Berlin has written a
sweeping history that builds upon the pioneering work of John Hope
Franklin, John Blassingame, Eugene Genovese, Herbert Gutman and
Edmund Morgan, and shines as both a comprehensive and astute
synthesis of current scholarship and as an original contribution to
the field.--James L. Swanson "Chicago Tribune "
In each society and in each generation slaves adjusted and adapted
to their conditions. Blacks never were exclusively the hapless
victims of the "white devil" of history or the obsequious Sambos of
the "Gone With The Wind" model. Berlin's greatest achievement is
finally correcting the misconceptions black and white Americans
have about how slavery operated in this nation.--Gregory Kane
"Baltimore Sun "
In his pathbreaking book on slavery's first two centuries in
America, Ira Berlin argues that our historical memory is
incomplete, based almost entirely on 19th-century portraits of the
'peculiar institution.' Underscoring differences within the North
America slave experience over time and place, Berlin paints a much
more complex picture of slavery's origins and formative
years.--John David Smith "Raleigh News & Observer "
In this book, Berlin, has produced a masterly synthesis of the vast
body of research hundreds of scholars have done on the first two
centuries of slavery in British, French, and Spanish North America,
a portrait of highly fortuitous change that should leave a telltale
stamp on all future treatments of New World slavery.--David Brion
Davis"American Historical Review" (10/01/1999)
In this masterly work, Ira Berlin has demonstrated that earlier
North American slavery had many different forms and meanings that
varied over time and from place to place. Slavery and race did not
have a fixed character that endured for centuries but were
constantly being constructed or reconstructed in response to
changing historical circumstances. "Many Thousands Gone"
illuminates the first 200 years of African-American history more
effectively than any previous study.--George M. Fredrickson "New
York Times Book Review "
In ["Many Thousands Gone"], Berlin emphasises that slavery, too
often treated by historians as a static institution, was in fact
constantly changing. The range of subjects is impressive--from work
patterns to family life, naming practices, religions, race
relations and modes of resistance. But by organising his account
along the axes of space and time, Berlin gives coherence to what
would otherwise have been an account overwhelming by its detail and
complexity..."Many Thousands Gone" is likely to remain for years to
come the standard account of the first two centuries of slavery in
the area that became the United States.--Eric Foner "London Review
of Books "
Ira Berlin has helped to shape the recent literature on slavery in
the United States..."Many Thousands Gone" represents Mr. Berlin's
most ambitious undertaking to date and a sharp temporal departure
from his previous books, for he has backtracked from the 19th
century to write a 200-year history of slavery on the North
American mainland that begins with the African background to
England's settlement of the colonial Chesapeake in the early 17th
century...[He] has written a major synthesis that will surely draw
praise from the academy.--Robert L. Paquette "Washington Times
"
Ira Berlin provides a sweeping survey of slavery and black life in
North America...from the early 17th into the early 19th centuries.
The result is the best general history we now have of the "peculiar
institution" during its first 200 years. "Many Thousands Gone" is a
remarkable book, one that beautifully integrates two centuries of
history over a wide geographical area. It is a benchmark study from
which students will learn and with which scholars will grapple for
many years to come.--Peter Kolchin "Los Angeles Times "
Ira Berlin, one of this nation's foremost scholars on the slave
era...presents a thorough and extensive examination of early
slavery...[He] considers the evolution of slavery, and the changing
nature of how slaves were treated. Though he never understates the
violence and domination practiced by slaveholders, Berlin
introduces the notion that slavery during its first two centuries
was a "negotiated relationship," even if that relationship was "so
profoundly asymmetrical" that most discount even the "notion of
negotiation" between the owner and the owned.--Renee Graham "Boston
Sunday Globe "
Ira Berlin's magisterial [book] is a story of slavery in
evolutionary perspective...As a comprehensive study of early North
American slavery the work is unexcelled and will be a boon to
students and scholars alike.--Daniel C. Littlefield "Slavery and
Abolition "
No general synthesis existed to pull all of [the] fragments of
scholarship together and present a coherent narrative of the first
two centuries of North American slavery--until now. Ira Berlin's
splendid study tells us what we need to know about how the peculiar
institution of antebellum America got that way over the previous
200 years. The scholarship of this study is astonishing. Berlin
appears to have read every secondary source and every published
primary source--not all of this in English--relevant to the
subject. Yet this burden of scholarship does not weigh down the
text with dull, heavy prose. Quite the contrary; Berlin has
accomplished a small miracle of organization, compression, and
skillful exposition..."Many Thousands Gone" is essential reading
for all those interested in the history of African Americans and of
race relations in this country. Berlin writes this history more
from the viewpoint of the slaves than that of the master. This is
all to the good, for it helps redr
Occasionally we are rewarded with a brave soul willing to impose
shape and direction on what has become, for many, a prodigiously
confusing historiography. Ira Berlin, like the very best historians
who have tackled the problem, brings to the task a formidable
record as a researcher and writer in more specialised areas of
slave and post-slave studies. The result of Berlin's labours is a
vital book, not simply in making sense of historical complexity,
but in advancing a new and distinctive argument about the shaping
of North America...["Many Thousands Gone" has] a sophisticated
argument that imposes shape on historical diversity without in the
least riding roughshod over the specific local and regional
differences that fragment the American slave experience. This is a
deceptive book, for it is not simply a general account of slavery
in North America. It is a subtle--and beautifully written--argument
about the phases of slave history and of that sharp differentiation
across time and place
Rather than focus on the much studied slavery of the antebellum
South, Berlin examines the earlier history of slavery throughout
North America and how it affected the consequent nature and
evolution of the peculiar institution...He traces the first African
presence in the Americas to a 'charter generation' that was
multilingual and multicultural, through the 'plantation generation'
that adjusted its African culture to the various regions of the
U.S., and, finally, the 'revolutionary generation' that began to
challenge U.S. ideals of liberty and freedom in the face of
slavery. Throughout this fascinating book, Berlin deftly outlines
the human negotiations that went on even in so unequal a
relationship as master-slave.--Vanessa Bush "Booklist "
Synthesizing a generation of scholarship, Berlin provides a
sweeping survey of slavery and black life in North America (the
European colonies that became the United States) from the early
17th into the early 19th centuries. The result is the best general
history we now have of the 'peculiar institution' during its first
200 years..."Many Thousands Gone" is a remarkable book, one that
beautifully integrates two centuries of history over a wide
geographical area. It is a benchmark study from which students will
learn and with which scholars will grapple for many years to
come.--Peter Kolchin "Los Angeles Times Book Review "
The American Constitution chose slavery...and the nation justified
the choice by formulating an ideology that made blacks into
something less than human beings. The result, as historian Ira
Berlin argues in a new book on slavery, "Many Thousands Gone", is
that African slavery became "no longer just one of many forms of
subordination--a common enough circumstance in a world ruled by
hierarchies--but the foundation on which the social order
rested."--Ellis Cose "Newsweek "
This important study successfully synthesizes insights of the past
40 years while advancing new scholarship which emphasizes the
shifting definition of both race and slavery in North
America..."Many Thousands Gone" is a well-written, provocative
reappraisal of the first 200 years of North American
slavery.--Marion Lucas "Bowling Green News "
Through his scholarship and leadership, Ira Berlin has recast the
way we conceive of the history of African Americans and their
relationship to other Americans...Covering a vast terrain and
chronological span, the author gives us a fuller portrayal of
slavery's formative stages in this country than we have ever
possessed. The book is a work of synthesis, harvesting the research
and insights of hundreds of historians who have focused on one
place, time, or issue. Though the book contains no original
archival research, it is a rare student of the American past who
will not be surprised by something in virtually every chapter. It
is the pattern of slavery that is significant here, the variations
and consistencies across the continent and across the centuries.
Berlin follows no one historiographical tradition, but weaves among
several, taking the best of each...[The] combination of context and
change, as well as negotiation and material grounding, gives Berlin
a nuanced, yet powerful way o
Today's correct historian can be as guilty of over simplification
as yesterday's apologist for slavery, but Berlin scrupulously
resists any such temptations. His emphasis is on subtlety and
complexity...According to Berlin the history of the first two of
slavery's three centuries in North America reveals nothing so much
as change, ambiguity and "messy, inchoate reality." For this reason
alone his book has great value and importance; it is also lucid,
measured and entirely persuasive...Indeed, for all the oppression
it documents, "Many Thousands Gone " can be read not as a chronicle
of denial and enslavement but as evidence of the irresistible
impulse for freedom. In this sense Berlin's book is an affirmation,
not merely of the fortitude and dignity of the slaves (a matter of
grave concern to many of today's historians) but of the capacity of
American democracy--despite its shortcomings--to live up to its
promises.--Jonathan Yardley "Washington Post "
The history of slavery in North America is not as simple, clear-cut
or tidy as is often believed. That is the message of this
impeccably presented history of American slavery from 1619, when
John Rolfe brought 'twenty Negars' to the Jamestown colony, to the
1820s, when the spirit of emancipation began to take hold in the
North...[Berlin's] distinctions have continuing resonance, as [he]
shows that once a society with slaves became a slave society, all
blacks--free or not--could come to be regarded as slaves: in short,
how an economic system became racism...The book holds many
surprises gleaned from the facts, whether in its portrait of New
York as a major slave city or its descriptions of free enterprise
at work among slaves. The economic and historical research
presented here is impressive. But what gives the book an additional
dimension is its deftly employed social insights.
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