White Over Black: American Attitudes toward the Negro, 1550-1812

by Winthrop D. Jordan, Christopher Leslie Brown (Foreword by), Peter H. Wood (Foreword by)

Overview

In 1968, Winthrop D. Jordan set out in encyclopedic detail the evolution of white Englishmen's and Anglo-Americans' perceptions of blacks, perceptions of difference used to justify race-based slavery, and liberty and justice for whites only. This second edition, with new forewords by historians Christopher Leslie Brown and Peter H. Wood, reminds us that Jordan's text is still the definitive work on the history of race in America in the colonial era. Every book published to this day on slavery and racism builds upon his work; all are judged in comparison to it; none has surpassed it.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780807871416
Publisher:	Omohundro Institute and UNC Press
Publication date:	02/06/2012
Series:	Published by the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture and the University of North Carolina Press
Edition description:	Second Edition
Pages:	696
Sales rank:	1,137,971
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.70(d)

About the Author

Winthrop D. Jordan (1931-2007) taught history at the University of Mississippi. His books include Tumult and Silence at Second Creek: An Inquiry into a Civil War Slave Conspiracy and White Man's Burden: Historical Origins of Racism in the United States.

Christopher Leslie Brown is professor of history at Columbia University. He is the author of Moral Capital: Foundations of British Abolitionism, for which he won the Frederick Douglass Book Prize.

Peter H. Wood is history professor emeritus at Duke University and author of Strange New Land: African Americans, 1526-1776, among others.

Table of Contents

Foreword Christopher Leslie Brown vii

Foreword Peter H. Wood xvii

Preface xxvii

Acknowledgments xxxv

Part 1 Genesis 1550-1700

I First Impressions: Initial English Confrontation with Africans 3

1 The Blackness Without 4

2 The Causes of Complexion 11

3 Defective Religion 20

4 Savage Behavior 24

5 The Apes of Africa 28

6 Libidinous Men 32

7 The Blackness Within 40

II Unthinking Decision: Enslavement of Negroes in America to 1700 44

1 The Necessities of a New World 45

2 Freedom and Bondage in the English Tradition 48

3 The Concept of Slavery 52

4 The Practices of Portingals and Spanyards 56

5 Enslavement: The West Indies 63

6 Enslavement: New England 66

7 Enslavement: Virginia and Maryland 71

8 Enslavement: New York and the Carolinas 83

9 The Un-English: Scots, Irish, and Indians 85

10 Racial Slavery: From Reasons to Rationale 91

Part 2 Provincial Decades 1700-1755

III Anxious Oppressors: Freedom and Control in a Slave Society 101

1 Demographic Configurations in the Colonies 102

2 Slavery and the Senses of the Laws 103

3 Slave Rebelliousness and White Mastery 110

4 Free Negroes and Fears of Freedom 122

5 Racial Slavery in a Free Society 128

IV Fruits of Passion: The Dynamics of Interracial Sex 136

1 Regional Styles in Racial Intermixture 137

2 Masculine and Feminine Modes in Carolina and America 144

3 Negro Sexuality and Slave Insurrection 150

4 Dismemberment, Physiology, and Sexual Perceptions 154

5 The Secularization of Reproduction 164

6 Mulatto Offspring in a Biracial Society 167

V The Souls of Men: The Negro's Spiritual Nature 179

1 Christian Principles and the Failure of Conversion 180

2 The Question of Negro Capacity 187

3 Spiritual Equality and Temporal Subordination 190

4 The Thin Edge of Antislavery 193

5 Inclusion and Exclusion in the Protestant Churches 198

6 Religious Revival and the Impact of Conversion 212

VI The Bodies of Men: The Negro's Physical Nature 216

1 Confusion, Order, and Hierarchy 217

2 Negroes, Apes, and Beasts 228

3 Rational Science and Irrational Logic 234

4 Indians, Africans, and the Complexion of Man 239

5 The Valuation of Color 252

6 Negroes Under the Skin 259

Part 3 The Revolutionary Era 1755-1783

VII Self-Scrutiny in the Revolutionary Era 269

1 Quaker Conscience and Consciousness 271

2 The Discovery of Prejudice 276

3 Assertions of Sameness 281

4 Environmentalism and Revolutionary Ideology 287

5 The Secularization of Equality 294

6 The Proslavery Case for Negro Inferiority 304

7 The Revolution as Turning Point 308

Part 4 Society and Thought 1783-1812

VIII The Imperatives of Economic Interest and National Identity 315

1 The Economics of Slavery 316

2 Union and Sectionalism 321

3 A National Forum for Debate 325

4 Nationhood and Identity 331

5 Non-English Englishmen 335

IX The Limitations of Antislavery 342

1 The Pattern of Antislavery 343

2 The Failings of Revolutionary Ideology 349

3 The Quaker View Beyond Emancipation 356

4 Religious Equalitarianism 361

5 Humanitarianism and Sentimentality 365

6 The Success and Failure of Antislavery 372

X The Cancer of Revolution 375

1 St. Domingo 375

2 Non-Importation of Rebellion 380

3 The Contagion of Liberty 386

4 Slave Disobedience in America 391

5 The Impact of Negro Revolt 399

XI The Resulting Pattern of Separation 403

1 The Hardening of Slavery 403

2 Restraint of Free Negroes 406

3 New Walls of Separation 414

4 Negro Churches 422

Part 5 Thought and Society 1783-1812

XII Thomas Jefferson: Self and Society 429

1 Jefferson: The Tyranny of Slavery 430

2 Jefferson: The Assertion of Negro Inferiority 435

3 The Issue of Intellect 440

4 The Acclaim of Talented Negroes 445

5 Jefferson: Passionate Realities 457

6 Jefferson: White Women and Black 461

7 Interracial Sex: The Individual and His Society 469

8 Jefferson: A Dichotomous View of Triracial America 475

XIII The Negro Bound by the Chain of Being 482

1 Linnaean Categories and the Chain of Being 483

2 Two Modes of Equality 486

3 The Hierarchies of Men 491

4 Anatomical Investigations 497

5 Unlinking and Linking the Chain 502

6 Faithful Philosophy in Defense of Human Unity 506

7 The Study of Man in the Republic 509

XIV Erasing Nature's Stamp of Color 512

1 Nature's Blackball 512

2 The Effects of Climate and Civilization 513

3 The Disease of Color 517

4 White Negroes 521

5 The Logic of Blackness and Inner Similarity 525

6 The Winds of Change 530

7 An End to Environmentalism 533

8 Persistent Themes 538

XV Toward a White Man's Country 542

1 Emancipation and Intermixture 542

2 The Beginning of Colonization 546

3 The Virginia Program 551

4 Insurrection and Expatriation in Virginia 560

5 The Meaning of Negro Removal 565

Epilogue

XVI Exodus 573

Note on the Concept of Race 583

Essay on Sources 586

Select List of Full Titles 610

Map: Percentage of Negroes in Total Non-Aboriginal Population, 1700 615

Index 617

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

Winthrop Jordan's masterpiece is as essential to the study of slavery and the development of race in the United States as it was when it first appeared. Jordan's insightful analysis, marvelous writing style, and deep humanity shine through on every page of White over Black. Christopher Brown's and Peter Wood's deft and elegant new forewords are the perfect complement to this most pivotal work in American historiography." —Annette Gordon-Reed, Harvard University

Editorial Reviews

"White over Black remains a signal achievement in American historiography, a rich analytical and stylistic bequest to early American scholarship."
-William and Mary Quarterly

From the Publisher