This book examines the historiography of nineteenth century slavery from the perspective of the “second slavery.” The concept of the second slavery emphasizes the relationship between local histories and world-economic transformations. It breaks with conventional narratives of slavery by emphasizing the expansion of reconfigured slaveries in extensive new zones of commodity production in Brazil, Cuba and the US South as part of world-economic processes of decolonization, industrialization, urbanization, and the creation of mass markets. Thus, slavery was not a moribund institution. Capitalist modernity, liberal ideology, and anti-slavery from above or from below, faced a vigorous foe that operated within the very economic, political, and cultural premises of the changing 19th century world. This perspective offers an original approach to the history of slavery. It has opened up vigorous debates over slavery and anti-slavery, Atlantic history and capitalism.
An international group of scholars critically engage older traditions of scholarship on Atlantic history, the economic history of slavery, and the history of slavery in Cuba, Brazil, and the United States from the perspective of the second slavery. Each chapter reinterprets its subject matter in a way that opens out to dialogue between national historiographies and to a reformulation of Atlantic and world-economic history. This collection of essays contributes to the development of a more productive conceptual framework for the reconstruction and reinterpretation of the historical relation of slavery and world capitalism during the nineteenth century.
Industry Reviews
In the Americas, the nineteenth century heralded wars of colonial liberation, the abolition of slavery, and the creation of liberal constitutional regimes that transformed subjects to citizens. Yet, a dark historical fact has long dragged down this celebratory narrative. In 1860 there were more humans enslaved in the Americas than at any other time in history—and four more million than in 1800. Rather than narrating the inevitable story of emancipation over the course of the nineteenth century, Dale Tomich has gathered the leading historians of slavery—Robin Blackburn, Anthony Kaye, José Antonio Piqueras, Rafael Marquese, and Ricardo Salles—to explain in nuanced detail how a new form of slavery emerged—a ‘Second Slavery’—in the United States, Brazil, and Cuba. Standing in contrast to the ‘First Slavery’ that accompanied colonial regimes governed by European monarchs, the authors analyze how the nineteenth century witnessed an expansion of technological advancements in the service of the production of cotton in the United States, sugar in Cuba, and coffee in Brazil. In short, these authors explain from empirical and theoretical perspectives how capitalism did not eclipse slavery. Rather, capitalism breathed new life into slavery and extended its profitability, productivity, and political longevity by transforming itself into a modern institution at the vanguard of globalization.
