Writing the History of Slavery

by David Stefan Doddington (Editor), Heiko Feldner (Editor), Enrico Dal Lago (Editor), Kevin Passmore (Editor), Stefan Berger (Editor)

Overview

Exploring the major historiographical, theoretical, and methodological approaches that have shaped studies on slavery, this addition to the Writing History series highlights the varied ways that historians have approached the fluid and complex systems of human bondage, domination, and exploitation that have developed in societies across the world. The first part examines more recent attempts to place slavery in a global context, touching on contexts such as religion, empire, and capitalism.

In its second part, the book looks closely at the key themes and methods that emerge as historians reckon with the dynamics of historical slavery. These range from politics, economics and quantitative analyses, to race and gender, to pyschohistory, history from below, and many more. Throughout, examples of slavery and its impact are considered across time and place: in Ancient Greece and Rome, Medieval Europe, colonial Asia, Africa, and the Americas, and trades throughout the Atlantic and Indian Oceans. Also taken into account are thinkers from Antiquity to the 20th century and the impact their ideas have had on the subject and the debates that follow.

This book is essential reading for students and scholars at all levels who are interested in not only the history of slavery but in how that history has come to be written and how its debates have been framed across civilizations.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781474285575
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	03/10/2022
Series:	Writing History
Pages:	480
Product dimensions:	6.17(w) x 9.32(h) x 1.38(d)

About the Author

David Stefan Doddington is Senior Lecturer in North American History at Cardiff University, UK.

Heiko Feldner is Senior Lecturer in Modern German History at Cardiff University, UK.

Heiko Feldner is co-director of the Centre for Ideology Critique and Žižek Studies at Cardiff University, UK. He is also the General Editor of Bloomsbury's Writing History series on historiography and historical theory, and a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, London. A former lecturer in the departments of political economy and history at the University of Halle-Wittenberg, Germany, he has written several books, including Zizek: Beyond Foucault (with F. Vighi, Palgrave 2007).

Enrico Dal Lago is Professor of American History at National University of Ireland, Galway, Ireland.

Kevin Passmore is Professor of History at Cardiff University, UK.

Stefan Berger is Professor of Social History and Director of the Institute of Social Movements and the House for the History of the Ruhr at the Ruhr University Bochum, Germany. He is the author of numerous books, including Nationalizing the Past (2015) and Germany: Inventing the Nation (2004) and the editor of A Companion to Nineteenth-Century Europe: 1789-1914 (2009). He is, along with Kevin Passmore and Heiko Feldner, one of the Series Editors for Bloomsbury's successful student book series, Writing History.

Lizette Jacinto holds a BA in History from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), Mexico City, Mexico (2001), MA studies in History by the Institute f or Social Sciences and Humanities "Alfonso Vélez Pliego" (ICSyH) of the Benemeritus Autonomous University of Puebla (BUAP), Puebla, Mexico (2003), and the Dr.-Phil. degree in History from the Witten-Herdecke University, Witten, Germany (2010), obtained under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Jörn Rüsen, and in collaboration with the Institute for Advanced Cultural Studies (KWI), Essen , Germany. She has taught at the University of Cologne, Cologne, Germany, and the Heinrich-Heine University, Düsseldorf, Germany, and has also been a guest lecturer at different universities in Europe and Latin America. Since 2015 she has been the lead trainer for Latin America of the research proposal writing courses Dies-ProGRANt, sponsored by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) and the German Ministry for Education and Research (BMBF), Germany. Since December 2015 she is a full Research Professor of the Institute for Social Sciences and Humanities "Alfonso Vélez Pliego" (ICSyH) of the BUAP university in Puebla, Mexico. Since 2017 she is a member of the National System of Researchers, SNI Level I, in Mexico. She is currently a member of the Editorial Board of the journals Historia da Historiografía, Brazil, and the electronic journal iMex - México Interdisciplinario, of the University of Düsseldorf, Germany. Since 2020 she is Member of the Board of Advisors of Bloomsbury Publishers, England, for the collection Theory and Method. In 2022, she was the organizer of the IV Congress of the International Theory of History Network (INTH), held in Puebla, Mexico. She has coordinated the books Género y Ciencia, Editorial Velvuert, 2011, and Racismo, cuerpo y violencia en América Latina, BUAP-Ediciones del Lirio, 2019. Her lines of research are associated with Theory of History (microhistory, cultural history and conceptual history), Social Movements, Feminism, History of Mexico in XX-XXI centuries, as well as Mexico-German Relations, especially the German-speaking left-wing Exile in Mexico.

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)

Editorial Reviews

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.” —Prof. Gad Heuman, Emeritus University of Warwick, UK

“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.” —Orlando Patterson, John Cowles Professor of Sociology, Harvard University, USA

“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.” —Emily West, Professor of American History, University of Reading, UK

From the Publisher