Beyond Slavery: Explorations of Race, Labor, and Citizenship in Postemancipation Societies

by Frederick Cooper, Nnoiz Papp, Rebecca J. Scott

Overview

In this collaborative work, three leading historians explore one of the most significant areas of inquiry in modern historiography--the transition from slavery to freedom and what this transition meant for former slaves, former slaveowners, and the societies in which they lived. Their contributions take us beyond the familiar portrait of emancipation as the end of an evil system to consider the questions and the struggles that emerged in freedom's wake.
Thomas Holt focuses on emancipation in Jamaica and the contested meaning of citizenship in defining and redefining the concept of freedom; Rebecca Scott investigates the complex struggles and cross-racial alliances that evolved in southern Louisiana and Cuba after the end of slavery; and Frederick Cooper examines the intersection of emancipation and imperialism in French West Africa. In their introduction, the authors address issues of citizenship, labor, and race, in the post-emancipation period and they point the way toward a fuller understanding of the meanings of freedom.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781469617374
Publisher:	The University of North Carolina Press
Publication date:	06/30/2014
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	216
File size:	883 KB

About the Author

Frederick Cooper is Charles Gibson Collegiate Professor of History at the University of Michigan.
Thomas C. Holt is the James Westfall Thompson Professor of American and African American History at the University of Chicago.
Rebecca J. Scott is Frederick Huetwell Professor of History at the University of Michigan.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Introduction

Thomas C. Holt / The Essence of the Contract: The Articulation of Race, Gender, and Political Economy in British Emancipation Policy, 1838-1866

Rebecca J. Scott / Fault Lines, Color Lines, and Party Lines: Race, Labor, and Collective Action in Louisiana and Cuba, 1862-1912

Frederick Cooper / Conditions Analogous to Slavery: Imperialism and Free Labor Ideaology in Africa

Afterword
Notes
Index

What People are Saying About This

David Montgomery

[For] everyone concerned with race, class, and modern intellectual history.

Ira Berlin

An extraordinary book of breathtaking scope that addresses matters of signal importance.

From the Publisher

The essays found here fit neatly together, and the challenge they pose to postmodernist conceptions of the constitutive power of discourse engages directly with recent lively debates among historians. The book will be of great interest to everyone concerned with race, class, and modern intellectual history.—David Montgomery, Yale University

A short review cannot do justice to the complexities within these pages. Each of the authors, for example, treats or touches on issues of gender in important ways, opening up pathways for further inquiries and research in all three sites.—Harvard Business History Review

The elegant essays in this volume explore the social and political changes that took place in colonial African and New World societies after slave emancipation. . . . The authors are to be congratulated for putting together a useful and stimulating volume. Their collaborative effort not only demonstrates the utility of comparative history but provides specialists in one region a handy summary of the kinds of work being done elsewhere.—American Historical Review

A masterful piece. . . . A valuable thematic summary of postemancipation societies. . . . [It] will be widely discussed in upper-level history courses and graduate seminars, and it should also attract the interest and admiration of scholars on both sides of the Atlantic.—Journal of Southern History

Since the publication of the truly pathbreaking books by Frank Tannenbaum and Kenneth Stampp, following World War II, our understanding of New World slavery has been revolutionized by literally thousands of well-researched books and scholarly articles. Yet only a few historians have turned to serious investigations of the meaning of emancipation and the longer-term consequences of racial slavery. Frederick Cooper (for Africa), Thomas C. Holt (for the British West Indies), and Rebecca J. Scott (for Cuba and Louisiana) are the most imaginative pioneers of this scholarship. Their new collaborative work will be essential reading for everyone interested in racial slavery and its intercontinental legacies.—David Brion Davis, Yale University

A powerful. . . exploration of the connections between classical political economy, race, class, gender, and labor. . . . Deserves a wide readership.—Journal of American History

Race, nationality, citizenship, freedom; Cooper, Holt, and Scott; big questions; accomplished scholars; innovative and compelling history. Beyond Slavery is an extraordinary book of breathtaking scope that addresses matters of signal importance.—Ira Berlin, University of Maryland at College Park

In this collaborative work spanning from Jamaica in the 1830s to French West Africa in the 1940s, three distinguished historians in the field describe, with nuance and complexity, the cultural landscape of postemancipation societies in Africa and the Americas.—Gulf South Historical Review

Editorial Reviews

A masterful piece.

Journal of Southern History

Deserves a wide readership.

Journal of American History

The authors are to be congratulated for putting together a useful and stimulating volume.

American Historical Review

A short review cannot do justice to the complexities within these pages.

Harvard Business History Review

Beyond Slavery is an extraordinary book of breathtaking scope that addresses matters of signal importance.

Ira Berlin, University of Maryland at College Park

From the Publisher