Peter Kolchin

The slaveholders' dilemma : freedom and progress in southern conservative thought, 1820-1860

In antebellum times slaveholders perceived themselves as thoroughly modern and moral men who were protecting human progress against the perversions spawned by the more radical aspects of the Enlightenment and the French Revolution. The slaveholders insisted that, in resisting the religious heresies, infidelity, ultra-democratic politics, and egalitarian dogmas then sweeping the North and Western Europe, they were proving themselves the firmest carriers of genuine progress itself. Surprisingly, they accepted the widespread idea that freedom generated the economic, social, and moral progress they embraced as their own cause. But they nonetheless increasingly took higher ground in defense of their slave system. In consequence, they plunged into an intellectual and political cul de sac. Genovese, in exploring their efforts to fight their way out of this dilemma, argues that proslavery Southerners--theologians, political theorists, economists, sociologists, and moral philosophers--simultaneously formed part of a broad trans-Atlantic conservative movement and yet advanced a distinct position that set them apart from their Northern and European counterparts. He also holds that the spokesmen for Southern slavery demonstrated a much higher level of intellectual talent than has been generally recognized and that they will no longer be subject to the obscurity into which they have fallen.

Some thoughts on emancipation in comparative perspective: Russia and the United States South

(1990). Some thoughts on emancipation in comparative perspective: Russia and the United States South. Slavery & Abolition: Vol. 11, No. 3, pp. 351-367.

Eugene D. Genovese: Historian of Slavery

I am a great admirer of Eugene D. Genovese’s historical scholarship. Because this is not now a fashionable assertion, I would like to take this opportunity to consider anew Genovese’s extraordinary contribution to the study of slavery and the Old South. First, some history. A young Genovese came to public attention in 1965, in part for publishing a pathbreaking collection of essays, The Political Economy of Slavery, but more for proclaiming that he hoped the “Vietcong” (the widely used American nickname for the National Liberation Front) would come to power in Vietnam, for which Richard Nixon, along with New Jersey’s Republican gubernatorial candidate and a number of state legislators, tried to have him fired from his position as assistant professor of history at Rutgers University. I begin with this incident because although Genovese’s most important contribution has been as a historian of slavery, he has also had a major impact on the historical profession—and on academia in general—as an outspoken Marxist. Being a radical professor may not seem especially noteworthy today, but it was in the “liberal” 1960s, when professing leftwing views was enough to put one’s career in jeopardy. (Other leftist scholars, such as Herbert Aptheker and Philip Foner, were unable to secure academic positions at all.) As much as any other one individual, I think, Genovese helped change this situation, making it possible for an outspoken radical to enter the mainstream of the American historical profession.1 Genovese’s academic success stemmed in part from the brilliance of his work, which could simply not be ignored, but it also reflected the fact that from the very beginning, his approach was distinguished by at least three interrelated character-

Planters, merchants, and slaves: plantation societies in British America, 1650–1820

In this thought-provoking volume, Trevor Burnard examines ‘the large integrated plantation and the plantation system’ (1) in three areas of British America: the Chesapeake colonies of Virginia and ...

Comparative Perspectives on Emancipation in the U.S. South: Reconstruction, Radicalism, and Russia

In this article I address three interrelated subjects: emancipation, the history of the U.S. South (and to a lesser extent Russia) in the era of emancipation, and comparative history.1 I begin by placing American emancipation in a general context and then narrow the focus by comparing the two largest of the many nineteenth-century emancipations from forced labor, that of the slaves in the southern United States and the serfs in Russia, before returning at the end to consider southern emancipation in temporal as well as geographic context.2 By focusing on the South in broader perspective, I hope to highlight what can be gained by using comparative analysis to consider questions that are usually addressed in individual locations and to explore how the way a subject is framed can shape our understanding of that subject.3 As this focus suggests, my use of the concept “comparison” is what might be called “soft” or “loose-constructionist,” and includes a variety of components designed to accentuate context. This approach is based on the belief that traditional historical judgments are often implicitly comparative, and that providing explicit context, even when focusing on developments in individual locations, can help us make sense of these judgments and of the issues behind them, and thereby improve our understanding of the past.4

Complicating the Big Picture: Robin Blackburn's The American Crucible

Building on two of his previous books, Robin Blackburn has written a big, sprawling, wide-angle volume that encompasses ‘the entire history of the enslavement of Africans and their descendants in the Americas’ (2). Based largely on a wide reading in secondary sources, it surveys the rise and especially the fall of the European-initiated slave systems in the New World and concludes with a brief consideration of their legacies. Blackburn’s approach is not so much comparative as ‘big picture’: although he occasionally points out differences among the various slave systems, he is less interested in comparing them than in examining them together as part of a common story. In this venture, he joins two other prominent historians – David Brion Davis and Seymour Drescher – who have recently written important bigpicture histories of slavery and abolition in the Americas. At times building on and supporting their arguments, Blackburn offers interpretations that at key points go in very different directions. The American Crucible is chock-full of information, but its great strength lies in its sweep and interpretive contributions. As he moves from the establishment of the American slave systems to their nature, abolition and aftermath, Blackburn addresses a number of important and complicated interpretive issues, in the process taking part – sometimes but not always explicitly – in historical debates that remain highly contested. Among the most notable of these debates are those that deal with the relationship between modern Western slavery and capitalism, and with explaining the overthrow of the apparently flourishing slave systems over a period of about a century from the 1770s to the 1880s. Along the way, Blackburn also has a great deal to say about diverse subjects that include slave resistance, the nature and impact of the Haitian Revolution, the character of abolitionists and the extent of societal change following emancipation.

Unfree Labor: American Slavery and Russian Serfdom.

Preface Introduction: The Origin and Consolidation of Unfree Labor PART 1:THE MASTERS AND THEIR BONDSMEN 1. Labor Management 2. Planters, Pomeshchiki, and Paternalism 3. Ideals and Ideology PART 2: THE BONDSMEN AND THEIR MASTERS 4. Community and Culture 5. Patterns of Resistance 6. Protest, Unity, and Disunity Epilogue: The Crisis of Unfree Labor Bibliographical Note Notes Index