by Peter Kolchin
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Product Description
The single best short survey in America, now updated.
Includes a New Preface and Afterward
In terms of accessibility and comprehensive coverage, Kolchin's American Slavery is a singularly important achievement. Now updated to address a decade of new scholarship, the book includes a new preface, afterword, and revised and expanded bibliographic essay. It remains the best book to introduce a subject of profound and lasting importance, one that lies at the center of American history.
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Average Customer Review:
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
 Solid, concise, non-ideological survey of field, 2008-10-29
This book is exactly what it says that it is: a short, thorough, scholarly history of American slavery. It provides an excellent introduction to a complex subject.
The virtues of this book are its balance and its brevity. It has no visible ideological ax to grind. The author's perspective is that of a professor of American history, who is very into his own field. He seems to nicely summarize the evidence in the field, and to fairly sum up the different controversies in the field.
This book seems to me to mark the coming of age of this field. In the past, American slavery was an ideologically polarized field. Early 20th century histories, of course, were largely racist, and apologists for slavery, with the notable exception of W.E.B. DuBois. Then, of course, there was a great wave of revisionist history in the 1960s and 1970s, which was largely pro-Civil Rights and fiercely in favor of Reconstruction.
This book seems to me to mark the changing of the guard in this field. Now, it is not a speciality that arouses great political passions, one way or the other. Now, of course, everyone agrees that slavery was an evil and that its departure was a great good. But, with the fading of the passions of the past, it becomes possible to look at the past more dispassionately. This book, for example, deals with nuance and sensitivity with such charged questions as the paternalism of the slaveholders, which Kolchin sees as severly limited but nonetheless emotionally real. He seems able to see both slaves and slaveholders, in short, as human beings caught up in an evil and degrading system.
Read this book if you want an introduction to this subject. It is a great place to start.
0 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
 Kolchin's Bias, 2007-08-15
This is my third Kolchin book his expertise on Slavery is without question. My issues relate to his central theme that Slavery in the Americas relate only to Black and White individuals. Native Americans had slavery in the Americas long before the first white person appeared on the horizon. Currently many black youths are "slaves" to gangs and the culture of blame and government dependence.
Kolchin has come to the realization that slavery is only towards blacks and to be blamed on white people United States. His focus on Racism is also suspect because of his inability to focus on racism within the Black community that is prevalent not only towards whites but all other races including black.
This issue is not black and white. Kolchin needs to focus on ways to learn from the racism and slavery history so that people from all races can unite and have common goals instead of race-baiting by using history to justify racism towards whites and all Americans.
2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
Great overview, with enough details, 2005-06-05
This is a perfect intro for the beginner and for teachers looking for a way to get a hold of what has become a vast subject. Makes a nice book to assign to undergrads as well.
14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
Outstanding Survey of American Slavery, 2000-12-18
Kolchin offers his book as a concise, readable synthesis of the movements in the historiography of slavery in the United States. Influenced by the movement toward social and cultural history, he devotes considerable attention to slave life in the antebellum south and the effects of the particular situation of slavery in the United States in shaping slave culture. Kolchin also situates slavery in the U.S. in the context of the world wide institution with comparisons to the Caribbean, Brazil, and to the Russian serfs which both highlights the unique situation of American Slaves and emphasizes that the institution of slavery did not exist in a vacuum. The book progresses chronologically from the 1619 arrival of slaves in Jamestown to a brief discussion of the end of slavery and the problems of reconstruction, with thematic treatments of slave life, white control and paternalism in antebellum slavery as well as white society, economy, and ideology in the American south. In producing such a smooth synthesis, Kolchin admittedly sacrifices a certain amount of detail and nuance for the sake of flow and clarity. Disconcerting, at times is his lack of documentation, another victim of simplicity in Kolchin's approach. While accomplishing his goal of remaining clear and readable, the reader sometimes wishes for some assistance in discerning the origin or fuller development of a particular position or point. To his credit, Kolchin works references to the historiography into his text well, and he provides an exceedingly thorough bibliographical essay at the end, which is probably the strongest segment of the work. Still, the lack of documentation sometimes proves frustrating and thus counters the goal of smooth flow in the text. In the final analysis, however, Kolchin produces an excellent, readable volume that accomplishes his goal of a balanced narrative that shows how slavery evolved over time in the United States. So too has it accomplished its purpose in enlightening beginners and enkindling much scholarly discussion.
13 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
Excellent History of Slavery in the USA, 2000-11-17
Over the past 50 years, the study of slavery has been one of the most dynamic and contentious areas in American History. A large volume of first-rate scholarship now exists on many aspects of North American slavery. This excellent book is a successful effort to synthesize the large volume of information on North American slavery. The book is organized chronologically, beginning with the Colonial period and progressing through the Revolution and the Antebellum period. Kolchin does an excellent job of describing the historical evolution of slavery in the USA. Another meritorious aspect is that Kolchin is an expert on the comparative history of slavery and provides useful comparative perspectives by comparing North American slavery with the features of other unfree societies. Kolchin is a clear writer and the book is very well organized. There is an excellent annotated bibliography which is a fine guide for readers interested in more specialized works on this topic. This is a must read for anyone interested in American History.
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