by Eugene D. Genovese
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Product Description
A reevaluation of the master-slave relationship in American history.
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Average Customer Review:
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
 History research, 2008-06-01
My son is a History Major in college and said that the book was a great resource.
0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
The greatest achievement of American historical writing, 2007-06-29
The Alpha and Omega of American slavery scholarship. No one has thought so carefully, researched so fully, written so gracefully on the most heart-breaking of historical subjects
14 of 22 people found the following review helpful:
 Dated at best; there are better options , 2006-11-10
This is a book that focuses on slavery as a system of paternalism. It tries hard but in its efforts reduces slaves to one dimensional caricatures who have bought into and welcome the system of slavery. I read this in college and the way slaves were described as being invested in this system seemed even then such a shallow stereotypic view.
My professor did not assign this book for the African-American History course; he supplemented with some of Geneovese's theories but we were not assigned this book. My professor always reminded us to "never forget that slaves wanted ownership of their own bodies, the freedom to control their own lives and destinies and to be seen as human beings not property" so I believe he may have hesitated to expose us to something that portrayed slaves as happy with paternalism and welcoming the system of slavery because we were already exposed to that stereotypic view of slavery in our culture (advertising media, movies, cartoons, etc).
Genovese seems to forget that being owned by someone with absolute power over their enitre existence had an effect on how slaves acted and how they viewed themselves and those in power. We have modern examples of how life threatening situations can change you psychologically and impact your view of your oppressors (Stockholm's syndrome).
African-American history is too important to ignore and there are books out there that are well researched and give a more complete picture of the realities of slavery; exploring the impact of this system on the people enslaved while not buying into paternalistic stereotypes.
Some titles worth reading:
Black Majority: Negroes in Colonial South Carolina from 1670 through the Stono Rebellion by Peter H. Wood
Slave Resistance and Early African American History by Peter P. Hinks
To Awaken My Afflicted Brethren: David Walker and the Problem of Antebellum Slave Resistance by Peter P. Hinks
Both Wood and Hinks are excellent historians. I took a class with Peter Hinks in college the major focus of his scholarship is slave resistance and in class he argued that Walker's appeal was not only important on its face but because it was widely circulated by both free and enslaved Africans that it inspired plans for insurrection maybe even Denmark Vesey's plan.
Labor of Love Labor of Sorrow by Jacqueline Jones
Jones has a good history of African-American Women focusing on slavery and reconstruction but at times it drags. She is an excellent researcher and sometimes they are not the best writers.
Writings of former slaves and freedmen:
David Walkers Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World by David Walker
The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano or Gustavus Vassa the African by Olaudah Equiano
Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl by Harriet Jacobs
Slave Narratives (Library of America) by William L. Andrews and Henry Louis Gates
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass by Fredrick Douglass
Nothing can compare to reading autobiographic accounts of those who were forced to endure slavery, all of the above are excellent; Equiano's biography includes the only first person account of Middle Passage ever written by an African. David Walker's Appeal is not an auto-biography it is a political and spiritual indictment of slave owners and a call for the enslaved to rise up against this immoral system of slavery in the name of God. Walker was an uncompromising radical political voice at a time when it was extremely unhealthy. His is a radical African-American voice that forshadows Fredrick Douglass, Medgar Evers, Martin Luther King and Malcolm X.
I think Roll Jordan Roll, is o.k. Hopefully the suggestions I've given for other options will either supplement this dated choice or replace it.
UPDATE: Hear former slaves speak about their experiences. Remembering Slavery: African Americans Talk About Their Personal Experiences of Slavery and Freedom [BOX SET] (Hardcover) by Ira Berlin (Editor), Marc Favreau (Editor), Steven F. Miller (Editor)
This includes transcripts and restored recordings from the 20's and 30's
Federal writers project. You hear the interviewers ask questions, the former slaves responses and have the transcripts and are able to see how interviewers edited. This is an insight into the people involved and sheds new light on a primary source that has been used in Afro-American History research. In addition to the suggestions I made above now you can hear former slaves speak for themselves; a must for any student of Afro-American history.
4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
Roll Jordan Roll, 2006-10-31
I read this book while in graduate school and found it among the more informative and fascinating books I read for the class to which it was assigned. Genovese writes in an intelligent style that is fast paced. This is not a typical dry history book. Even though slavery in America is not one of my specialties, this book made me aware of things I never knew.
Slavery is detestable to our modern society, but like it or not, it is part of our heritage. The world the slaves made lives on with us today. Genovese writes that white culture, particularly the culture of the poor whites, is very much in alignment with the world of the slaves. This book traces religion, family, social structures, daily life, and the life as slaves that black Americans experienced. Much of what is present (at least at the time this book was written and published) is clearly evident in the world the slaves made. Let's face it, life as a slave is nothing anyone would want to recreate (no modern reality TV show would ever dare such a concept) but for those who had to endure it, they made the most of their lives and our nation has benefited from that experience.
I recommend this book for American historians and social historians. The casual reader may be intimidated by the length, but it is worth every minute spent on it.
11 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
A Tour de Force of American History, 2006-07-22
Thorough, nuanced, psychoanalytic and balanced; a tour de force: A prodigious work of American Historical scholarship.
Genovese has done us all a great service and we should be immensely grateful to him for producing this masterpiece on one of the most unpleasant periods of American history.
Even with some of the correctly pointed out shortcoming noted by other reviewers, Roll, Jordan, Roll still deserves a place in the Panthenon of American Historical Scholarship -- along side John Hope Franklin's From Slavery to Freedom.
I strongly disagree with other reviewer's that the author's conscious racist bias has somehow seeped in, flawed, colored and otherwise helped frame the context. To the extent this is true at all, it is almost certainly done unconsciously. However, to the author's credit, it must be pointed out that time after time he has drawn a wide berth around the context (one reviewer referred to this as over-contextualizing) just so that the reader can decide for himself what the true nature of the substance is. The scholarship in this volume is so cleanly done that a charge of racist bias frankly is almost incongruous.
For instance in discussing southern paternalism (referenced by an earlier reviewer), the section is prefaced with the following introductory paragraph:
"Cruel, unjust, exploitative, oppressive, slavery bound two peoples together in bitter antagonism while creating an organic relationship so complex and ambivalent that neither could express the simplest human feelings without reference to the other."
The author then goes on to say that:
"Southern paternalism, like every other paternalism, had little to do with Ole Massa's ostensible benevolence, kindness, and good cheer. It grew out of the necessity to discipline and morally justify a system of exploitation."
None of this strikes me as the easily recognizable and consciously slanted racist tripe we are all so accustomed to by racist apologist American historians. On the contrary, Genovese appeals to a need for the reader to think more deeply about the broader outlines of the context of this two-way subhuman drama. He asks us to see in fact how slavery entrapped both slave and master into a subhuman form of existence, out of which a normalized dynamics had to, and eventually did evolve, and did so organically. And if there was ever any doubt about the author's position then the following point made in the same section on paternalism should have put such doubts to rest:
"But southern slave society was not merely one more manifestation of some abstraction called racist society. Its history was essentially determined by particular relationships of class power in racial form."
By my way of thinking, this is drawing out and exhibiting the kind of complexity one is unlikely to find in any American history book anywhere, and on any subject -- not to mention on discussions about race and racism. Even the fact that there is an element of Marxist analysis lurking in the background does not bother me because it is appropriate and honestly applied - in the same way that WEB Du Bois applied it in his analysis of Reconstruction (See my review on Amazon.com).
But more importantly, every page and every paragraph in this book is treated with the same incredible depth and scholarly sophistication. Nothing is left to chance; polemics and BS do not have a chance to enter the equation in this manuscript. The analysis throughout is solid, transparent, devastatingly clear and packed with information.
If there is a better book in print, please refer me to it.
Fifty stars.
Reviewer: Herbert L. Calhoun, Ph.D. is the author of the forthcoming " Cultures Shamed, Cultures Denied, and Cultures Erased: The Long-term Impact of Racism on American culture."
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