The American Crucible: Slavery, Emancipation and Human Rights
This book furnishes a panoramic view of slavery and emancipation in the Americas from the conquests and colonization of the sixteenth century to the ‘century of abolition’ that stretched from 1780 to 1888. Tracing the diverse responses of African captives, The American Crucible argues that while slave rebels and abolitionists made real gains, they also suffered cruel setbacks and disappointments, leading to a momentous radicalization of the discourse of human rights.
In it, Robin Blackburn explains the emergence of ferocious systems of racial exploitation while rejecting the comforting myths that portray emancipation as somehow already inscribed in the institutions and ideas that allowed for, or even fostered, racial slavery in the first place, whether the logic of the market, the teachings of religion, or the spirit of nationalism. Rather, Blackburn stresses, American slavery was novel—and so too were the originality and achievement of the anti-slavery alliances which eventually destroyed it.
The Americas became the crucible for a succession of fateful experiments in colonization, silver mining, plantation agriculture, racial enslavement and emancipation. The exotic commodities produced by the slave plantations helped to transform Europe and North America, raising up empires and stimulating industrial revolution and ‘market revolution’ to bring about the pervasive commodification of polite society, work and everyday life in parts of Europe and North America. Fees, salaries and wages fostered consuming habits so that capitalism, based on free wage labor in the metropolis, became intimately dependent on racial slavery in the New World.
But by the late eighteenth century the Atlantic boom had sown far and wide the seeds of subversion, provoking colonial rebellion, slave conspiracy and popular revolt, the aspirations of a new black peasantry and ‘picaresque proletariat’, and the emergence of a revolutionary doctrine: the ‘rights of man’. The result was a radicalization of the principles of the Enlightenment, with the Haitian Revolution rescuing and reshaping the ideals memorably proclaimed by the American and French revolutions.
Blackburn charts the gradual emergence of an ability and willingness to see the human cost of the heedless consumerism and to challenge it. The anti-slavery idea, he argues, brought together diverse impulses—the ‘free air’ doctrine maintained by the common people of Europe, the critique of the philosophes and the urgency of slave resistance and black witness. The anti-slavery idea made gains thanks to a succession of historic upheavals. But the remaining slave systems—in the US South, Cuba and Brazi—were in many ways as strong as ever. They were only overturned thanks to the momentous clashes unleashed by the American Civil War, Cuba’s fight for independence and the terminal crisis of the Brazilian Empire.
Hardback, 512 pages
ISBN: 9781844675692
May 2011
$34.95 / £20.00 / $43.50CAN
Reviews
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A brilliant and engaging account of slavery and its ending. This is a masterly analysis ... with significance not simply for historians of slavery. It is an important contribution to our understanding of the shaping of the modern western world.
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The American Crucible poses a challenge for the political future as well as a bold reappraisal of the historical past.
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Blackburn describes emancipation in all its vexed, indeterminate grandeur, propelled by violent clashes, public debate, harrowing exposés, and the consolidation of new notions of freedom and equality.
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A marvellous book—insightful and stimulating—which boldly links the expansion of human rights to Marxist and related views of economic development.
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One of the finest one-volume histories of the rise and fall of modern slavery.
Blog
New Left Review—new issue out now
The November/December issue of the New Left Review has been released, and includes the following essays:
Mike Davis: Spring Confronts Winter
Against a backdrop of world economic slump, what forces will shape the outcome of contests between a raddled system and its emergent challengers? Mike Davis examines echoes of past rebellions in 2011's global upsurge of protest.
Mike Davis is author of Planet of Slums.
Robin Blackburn: Crisis 2.0
Internationally, austerity measures have resulted in unemployment, stagnation, the imposition of technocracies, the destruction of welfare systems and a collapse in global demand. Robin Blackburn outlines some radical transitional policy responses that could address the underlying causes of the financial crisis.
Robin Blackburn is the author of Age Shock: How Finance is Failing Us and The American Crucible.
Perry Anderson: Magri's Farewell
Perry Anderson looks back upon the life and work of Lucio Magri, the Italian revolutionary and writer who died last year. An incisive critic of the PCI from both inside and outside of the Party, Anderson traces Magri's unique synthesis of theory and popular struggle from the Hungarian Revolt to the Iraq War, including his last work, The Tailor of Ulm.
Visit the New Left Review website to read the essays in full (subscribers only)
Verso Books at the Occupy Boston Library
Via Stephen Squibb, a photo of Verso titles proudly stacked on the Occupy Boston Library milk crates:
Books in the photograph:
Planet of Slums, by Mike Davis
Close to the Edge: In Search of the Global Hip Hop Generation, by Sujatha Fernandes
I'm with the Bears: Stories from a Damaged Planet, with contributions by Margaret Atwood, Paolo Bacigalupi, T.C. Boyle, Toby Litt, Lydia Millet, David Mitchell, Nathaniel Rich, Kim Stanley Robinson, Helen Simpson, and Wu Ming 1, and with an introduction by Bill McKibben
The Obama Syndrome: Surrender at Home, War Abroad, by Tariq Ali
Meltdown: The End of the Age of Greed, by Paul Mason
The American Crucible: Slavery, Emancipation, and Human Rights, by Robin Blackburn
News for All the People: The Epic Story of Race and the American Media, by Juan González and Joseph Torres
Trampling Out the Vintage: Cesar Chavez and the Two Souls of the United Farm Workers, by Frank Bardacke
"We are black..."—Verso books for Black History Month
We are black, it is true, but tell us, gentlemen, you who are so judicious, what is the law that says that the black man must belong to and be the property of the white man? ... Yes, gentleman, we are free like you, and it is only by your avarice and our ignorance that anyone is still held in slavery up to this day, and we can neither see nor find the right that you pretend to have over us ... We are your equals then, by natural right, and if nature pleases itself to diversify colours within the human race, it is not a crime to be born black nor an advantage to be white.
This excerpt is from a letter written in July 1792 by the leaders of the revolution of Haitian slaves. The letter has been republished in the collection of writings of the black leader Toussaint L'Overture, The Haitian Revolution, which includes also the correspondence between him and Napoleon Bonaparte. In the late eighteenth century, Toussaint L'Overture and his supporters established the first black republic in the world.
In the United Kingdom, October is Black History Month. The celebration was originally introduced in 1926 on the initiative of Carter G. Woodson, the editor of the Journal of Negro History. In 2007, no fewer than 6,000 events were held in the UK as part of its programme. Here are some key Verso titles relevant to the study and celebration of African and Caribbean history.
Discussions
Begin a discussionOther books by Robin Blackburn
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Age Shock
A searing look at the fiscal crisis of an aging society, with radical new proposals. -
An Unfinished Revolution
by Robin Blackburn, Abraham Lincoln, et al.
The impact of the American Civil War on Karl Marx, and Karl Marx on America.
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The Overthrow of Colonial Slavery
"One of the finest studies of slavery and abolition."—Eric Foner
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The Making of New World Slavery
Tracing European doctrines of race and slavery from medieval times to the early modern epoch.
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Banking on Death, Or Investing in Life
A panoramic view of the origins and development of the pension idea.
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After the Fall
Edited by Robin Blackburn
Insightful analysis from leading political thinkers in the aftermath of the collapse of communism.