Economic Slavery Or Freedom

If "slavery" is defined broadly to include bonded child labor and forced prostitution, there are upward of 25 million slaves in the world today. Individuals and groups are freeing some slaves by buying them from their enslavers. But slave redemption is as controversial today as it was in pre-Civil War America. In Buying Freedom, Kwame Anthony Appiah and Martin Bunzl bring together economists, anthropologists, historians, and philosophers for the first comprehensive examination of the practical and ethical implications of slave redemption. While recognizing the obvious virtue of the desire to buy the freedom of slaves, the contributors ask difficult and troubling questions: Does redeeming slaves actually increase the demand for--and so the number of--slaves? And what about cases where it is far from clear that redemption will improve the material condition, or increase the real freedom, of a slave? Buying Freedom includes essays by the editors and by Dean Karlan and Alan Krueger, Carol Ann Rogers and Kenneth Swinnerton, Arnab Basu and Nancy Chau, Stanley Engerman, Jonathan Conning and Michael Kevane, Jok Madut Jok, Ann McDougall, Lisa Cook, Margaret Kellow, John Stauffer, and Howard McGary.

In this interdisciplinary study, scholars consider the aftermath of slavery, focusing on Caribbean societies and the southern United States. What was the nature and impact of slave emancipation? Did the change in legal status conceal underlying continuities in American plantation societies? Was there a common postemancipation pattern of economic development? How did emancipation affect the politics and culture of race and class? This comparative study addresses precisely these types of questions as it makes a significant contribution to a new a growing field.

One Kind of Freedom examines the economic institutions that replaced slavery and the conditions under which ex-slaves were allowed to enter the economic life of the United States following the Civil War. The authors contend that although the kind of freedom permitted to black Americans allowed substantial increases in their economic welfare, it effectively curtailed further black advancement and retarded Southern economic development. The new edition of this economic history classic includes a new introduction by the authors, an extensive bibliography of works in Southern history published since the appearance of the first edition, and revised findings based on newly available data and statistical techniques.

Covers major events in the Caribbean struggle for freedom from emancipation to the present - from Toussaint's Haiti to the more recent revolutions in Cuba, Grenada and the Dominican Republic. The range of coverage is comprehensive calling attention to the variety of post-slavery experiences in the Spanish, Dutch, English and French Caribbean.

It is beyond dispute that slavery has always been abhorrent and, wherever it still exists, should be abolished. Where most scholarly writing on slavery in the past has concentrated on examining slaves as victims, recent writings have taken a more nuanced view of slavery in focusing on the slaves themselves and their cultural and psychological accomplishments in captivity. Also, studies of the system's profitability have shown that, from an economic perspective, slavery worked for the slaveholders and their society.In Slavery, Emancipation, and Freedom, the distinguished scholar Stanley Engerman succinctly synthesizes current scholarship and addresses questions that are critical to understanding the nature of slavery: Why did slavery arise, and how, why, where, and when did it legally end? What impact did slavery have on the enslaved? Was the impact lingering or was it reversed by the provision of freedom?Engerman begins his study by discussing slavery from a global perspective. He reminds us of the ubiquity of slavery throughout the world, challenging the stereotype that it was only the American South's "peculiar institution." Using the same broad comparative and temporal approach to discuss emancipation, he shows how emancipation in the southern states, several decades after it began in other parts of the world, both differed from and mirrored abolition around the globe. Slavery, Emancipation, and Freedom is an important confrontation with America's and the world's past and present. Both the breadth and depth of this brief, incisive treatise demonstrate why Engerman is considered one of America's most insightful and respected scholars.

The opportunity for slaves to produce goods, for their own use or for sale, facilitated the development of a domestic economy largely independent of their masters and the wider white community. Drawing from a range of primary sources, these essays show how slaves organised their domestic economy and created an economic and social space for themselves under slavery which profoundly affected family and gender relations. In their efforts to protect the integrity of their families they became primary actors in their preparation for freedom. Selected and revised for publication, this collection of essays stems from the University of Rochester conference, "African-American Work and Culture in the 18th and 19th Centuries." Contributors include: Josephine A. Beoku Betts, Kenneth L. Brown, John Campbell, Cheryll Ann Cody, Mary Beth Corrigan, Stanley, L. Engerman, Sharon Ann Holt, Larry E. Hudson Jr, Robert Olwell, Lorena S. Walsh