The Second Slavery

"Slavery throughout the capitalist world-economy expands. The old zones in one way or another reach their limits and the new zones break through: to become part of the new division of labor (in the 19th century). In that sense The Second Slavery would encompass both decline and renewal of slaveries. I never intended the idea to apply just to Cuba, Brazil, and the cotton South as some people seem to take it. For me it is a concept of world economy and Cuba, Brazil, and the South are the obvious examples of those zones that break through. They permit us to think about slavery in a more dynamic way, but there is much more work to be done. From this perspective I would be more inclined to include Reunion, Mauritius and some parts of India, Ceylon and Java as well as British Guiana, than the older French and British Caribbean islands." -- contributor Dale Tomich, Binghamton U., New York *** The Second Slavery includes the following essays: African Slaves and the Atlantic: A Cultural Overview * The End of the British Atlantic Slave Trade or the Beginning of the Big Slave Robbery, 1808-1850 * Peasant or Proletarian: Emancipation and the Struggle for Freedom in British Guiana in the Shadow of the Second Slavery * The End of the "Second Slavery" in the Confederate South and the "Great Brigandage" in Southern Italy: A Comparative Study * Puerto Rico: "Atlantizacion" and Culture during the "Segunda Esclavitud" * The Second Slavery: Modernity, Mobility, and Identity of Captives in Nineteenth-Century Cuba and the Atlantic World * Commodity Frontiers, Conjuncture and Crisis: The Remaking of the Caribbean Sugar Industry, 1783-1866 * The Aftermath of Abolition: Distortions of the Historical Record in Machado de Assis' Counselor Aires' Memorial * The Second Slavery: Modernity in the 19th-Century South and the Atlantic World. (Series: Slavery and Postemancipation / Sklaverei und Postemanzipation / Esclavitud y Postemancipacion - Vol. 6)

Sheds new light on both pro and antislavery politics in the nineteenth-century Americas. The creation of new frontiers of slave commodity production and the expansion and intensification of slavery in Brazil, Cuba, and the southern United States were an integral part of the expansion of the world economy during the nineteenth century. Beginning from this vantage point, The Politics of the Second Slavery brings together a group of international scholars to reinterpret pro- and antislavery politics both globally and nationally as part of the forces that were restructuring Atlantic slavery. Individual chapters shed new light on the decolonization and nationalization of slavery in the Americas, the politics of proslavery elites both within particular countries and across the Atlantic region, the abolition of the international slave trade, and slave resistance.

The Atlantic and Africa breaks new ground by exploring the connections between two bodies of scholarship that have developed separately from one another. On the one hand, the "second slavery" perspective that has reinterpreted the relation of Atlantic slavery and capitalism by emphasizing the extraordinary expansion of new frontiers of slave commodity production and their role in the economic, social, and political transformations of the nineteenth-century world-economy. On the other hand, Africanist scholarship that has established the importance of slavery and slave trading in Africa to the political, economic and social organization of African societies during the nineteenth century. Taken together, these two movements enable us to delineate the processes forming the capitalist world-economy, establish its specific geographical and historical structure, and reintegrates Africa into the transformations in the world economy. This volume explores this paradigm at diverse levels ranging from state formation and the reorganization of world markets to the creation of new social roles and identities.

This collection examines slavery and its relationship to international capital during the nineteenth century. With thematic chapters and case studies written by an international array of contributors, this volume analyzes the historiography of Atlantic slavery and investigates the slave economies of the US South, Cuba, and Brazil.

Traces the historical development of slave labor and plantation agriculture in nineteenth-century Martinique. A classic text long out of print, Slavery in the Circuit of Sugar traces the historical development of slave labor and plantation agriculture in Martinique during the period immediately preceding slave emancipation in 1848. Interpreting these events against the broader background of the world-economy, Dale W. Tomich analyzes the importance of topics such as British hegemony in the nineteenth century, related developments of the French economy, and competition from European beet sugar producers. He shows how slaves’ adaptation—and resistance—to changing working conditions transformed the plantation labor regime and the very character of slavery itself. Based on archival sources in France and Martinique, Slavery in the Circuit of Sugar offers a vivid reconstruction of the complex and contradictory interrelations among the world market, the material processes of sugar production, and the social relations of slavery. In this second edition, Tomich includes a new introduction in which he offers an explicit discussion of the methodological and theoretical issues entailed in developing and extending the world-systems perspective and clarifies the importance of the approach for the study of particular histories. Dale W. Tomich is Deputy Director of the Fernand Braudel Center for the Study of Economies, Historical Systems, and Civilizations, and Professor of Sociology and History at Binghamton University, State University of New York. He is the editor of New Frontiers of Slavery, also published by SUNY Press.

"Tremendously impressive, the result of a lifetime of learning. Historical writing at its best." —Marcus Rediker, author of The Slave Ship A history of 19th century slavery in the US, Brazil and Cuba from a critically acclaimed historian of slavery in the Americas The Reckoning offers the first rounded account of the rise and fall of the Second Slavery—largescale plantation slavery in nineteenth-century Brazil, Cuba and the US South. Robin Blackburn shows how a fusion of industrial capitalism and transatlantic war and revolution turbo-charged racial oppression and the westwards expansion of the United States. Blackburn identifies the new territories, new victims and new battle cries of the Second Slavery. He emphasises the role of financial credit in the spread of plantation agriculture, traces the connections between slavery and the US Civil War, and asks why Brazil threw off Portuguese rule whereas Cuba became one of imperial Spain’s final outposts. The Second Slavery faced a fearful reckoning in the 1860s and after when the supposedly invincible Slave Power was defied by extraordinary cross-class, international and interracial alliances. Blackburn narrates the abolitionists’ difficult victory over the enslavers, while documenting the racial backlash which brought on Jim Crow and cheated the freedmen and freedwomen of the fruits of their struggle.

Placing slavery in the mainstream of modern history, the essays in this survey describe its transfer from the Old World, its role in forging the interdependence of the Atlantic economies, and its impact on Africa.

'The Reinvention of Atlantic Slavery' explores how, in an age of industry and abolition, ambitious planters in the Upper US South, Cuba, and Brazil expanded slavery by collaborating with a transnational group of chemists, engineers, and other 'plantation experts' to assist them in adapting the technologies of the Industrial Revolution to suit 'tropical' needs