Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America by Ira Berlin (PDF)

Description

Today most Americans, black and white, identify slavery with cotton, the deep South, and the African-American church. But at the beginning of the nineteenth century, after almost two hundred years of African-American life in mainland North America, few slaves grew cotton, lived in the deep South, or embraced Christianity. Many Thousands Gone traces the evolution of black society from the first arrivals in the early seventeenth century through the Revolution. In telling their story, Ira Berlin, a leading historian of southern and African-American life, reintegrates slaves into the history of the American working class and into the tapestry of our nation.Laboring as field hands on tobacco and rice plantations, as skilled artisans in port cities, or soldiers along the frontier, generation after generation of African Americans struggled to create a world of their own in circumstances not of their own making. In a panoramic view that stretches from the North to the Chesapeake Bay and Carolina lowcountry to the Mississippi Valley, Many Thousands Gone reveals the diverse forms that slavery and freedom assumed before cotton was king. We witness the transformation that occurred as the first generations of creole slaves–who worked alongside their owners, free blacks, and indentured whites–gave way to the plantation generations, whose back-breaking labor was the sole engine of their society and whose physical and linguistic isolation sustained African traditions on American soil.As the nature of the slaves’ labor changed with place and time, so did the relationship between slave and master, and between slave and society. In this fresh and vivid interpretation, Berlin demonstrates that the meaning of slavery and of race itself was continually renegotiated and redefined, as the nation lurched toward political and economic independence and grappled with the Enlightenment ideals that had inspired its birth.

User’s Reviews

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐The myth of slavery derives from the powerful images of the miniseries Roots; the notion that black people were simply swept out of their African lives, degraded and sometimes killed on the harsh way to America and then put to work on a cotton plantation without power of any sort.Ira Berlin, in this beautifully written and thoroughly researched history of the first two hundred years of American slavery, “Many Thousands Gone”, blows apart that myth. He says that slavery had great variety, based on geographic, economic and generational factors. The first generation of slaves in America were creoles, born of white and African American parents. They frequently lived along the sea and interacted with people of all walks of life, were traders and often spoke multiple languages. These slaves frequently stayed with their families, knew and utilized the courts to petition for freedom, they worked with their slave-owners to grow crops and to negotiate payment for their eventual freedom. This changed with subsequent generations who were plucked from central Africa and did not have the same experience with the white world. While slaves in these subsequent generations lost the power to negotiate the terms of their slavery with their slaveholders, they were able to grab autonomy in other ways. They grew and sold goods in cities, they purchased their freedom, though often at a high price. They escaped and formed maroon armed communities.A few other factors also played a significant role in determining the virulence of slavery, specifically geography and economics. Some crops like cotton and tobacco were well suited to the plantation systems and in areas where those crops grew well, the slave system was particularly harsh. History was another factor. In the form of the American Revolution it disrupted the plantation system, because the plantation owners, who were often patriots with strong beliefs in the rights of man, also owned slaves and defended their right to do so. The loyalists took advantage of this dilemma and often had the plantation slaves fighting on the loyalist side in exchange for the promise of becoming free men. Sometimes they even delivered on that promise.My only criticism is that I wanted more of a narrative that would bring together the various aspects of slavery. I was left with the feeling that American slavery was really Mississippi slavery or South Carolina slavery or New York slavery. The legacy of slavery appears to be monolithic even if the experience of slavery was not.

⭐Ira Berlin in “Many Thousands Gone” has made a very important contribution to the growing literature attempting to understand both the big picture and the daily details of slavery. As his subtitle suggests, his work focuses on the first two centuries of slavery in North America.Berlin’s primary (and well-documented) thesis is that slave culture was not one monolithic culture, but several different cultures depending upon the era and the area of North American enslavement. Additionally, Berlin highlights that slavery was racist and classist, an interpretation which does not minimize the evils of racism, but also exposes the evils of classism.Though in other works by the same author, readers find first-hand accounts of the horrors of slavery in the words of the enslaved, such documentation is less evident in this work. An increase in such documentation would have strengthened the already excellent “Many Thousand Gone.” Still, the overall message and “feel” of “Many Thousands Gone” does accurately and powerfully depict the agony and inhumanity of African American slavery.Berlin engages the important issue of the slave’s choice of or refusal to choose the master’s religion. Including a small sampling of the slave narratives (the majority of which evidence acceptance of Christianity) and the myriad slave conversion accounts, would have provided added depth to this fine book. Converting slaves, by their own accounts, did not see themselves as converting to their masters’ religion. Instead, they saw themselves rejecting their masters’ hypocritical distortion of Christianity and receiving Christ and Christianity, cleansed of lies and replete with the message of eternal freedom spirituality and internal freedom in Christ.For the broad panorama of early enslavement, look no further than “Many Thousands Gone.”Reviewer: Bob Kellemen, Ph.D., is the author of Beyond the Suffering: Embracing the Legacy of African American Soul Care and Spiritual Direction , Soul Physicians, and Spiritual Friends.

⭐Berlin, one of the premier historians on American slavery, has written a well-researched, marvelously written study of slavery during its first two centuries. The book is comprehensive in its treatment dividing the story both chronologically and geographically to make the narrative manageable and thorough. The footnotes contain a wealth of resources for further research. This is a must read for anyone interested in the deep story of slavery. Interesting, sad, but compelling, and insightful, the focus of the story is on the effects of slavery on the creole, African, and African Americans who lived and suffered during these to hundred years.

⭐I love this book. The previous reviewers who gave it 4+ stars are right on. Alas, for some reason the Kindle editors did not see fit to make the footnote numbers link to the footnotes. I’m a graduate student, I have to write a paper on the book, and reading the references after I’ve read the book is spoiling the experience for me. And it won’t help my writing the paper!Kindle needs to get on the ball with footnotes and make them accessible for all books. I’ve read some non-fiction/history that have easily accessible footnotes, but I would rather have bought the hard copy of this one.

⭐Item arrived promptly, was in good condition, was exactly what i needed. Happy with my purchase!

⭐Provocative reading

⭐A seminal work on the effects of America’s “”Strange Institution””. An ongoing reliable resource for those doing historical research of The Era……

⭐Took some time, but good quality

⭐I can only echo the previous 5 star reviews. I have just finished reading Many Thousands Gone and I rank it as a historical masterpiece.For me, what puts the work of Ira Berlin at a whole new level of excellence is the very engaging way in which he demolishes the linear story of slavery (from the middle passage to the plantation to abolitionism and emancipation) so often presented by other historians, and introduces the reader to the far richer and more complex issue of the changing dynamics on the ground. In this, he considers the issues of power and subjugation, of course, but also of protest, revolt and negotiation between slave and slaveholder. It makes for some fascinating reading.In this respect, we learn an enormous amount on the life and conditions of slaves in different parts of North America, and how these could be so different from each other. As we progress into the War for Independence period (before, during and after) we get to grips with how circumstances differed from region to region, and most significantly, how the war between loyalists to Britain and patriots turned the slave world of the Americas upside down.Other issues rarely mentioned in more famous books on slavery is how, for instance, the closing of the Atlantic slave trade actually encourage slave trade within the US, and how it brought a lucrative income to many. Furthermore, the conditions of recently freed slaves is explained with great care, and the often contradictory nature of manumission and emancipation is well explained.All in all, a priceless work that leaves the reader with lots to think about.

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