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The cover of Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America

Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America

Ira Berlin

If race is a historical construction, how were slavery and ideas of race made and remade over two centuries?

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At a glance

Author
Ira Berlin

Why read it

  • You will understand why the idea that race is socially constructed has changed so little in practice
  • You will learn to see race as something produced by history, not a fixed fact
  • You will see that slavery was not only a Southern story, since the North remained a society with slaves well into the nineteenth century

Who it is for

  • A reader tired of slogans about race who wants the historical record
  • A teacher planning a lesson on how slavery really developed
  • Someone asking why ideas about race hold on so hard

Contents

  1. Prologue: Making Slavery, Making Race
  2. I. SOCIETIES WITH SLAVES: The Charter Generations
  3. 1. Emergence of Atlantic Creoles in the Chesapeake
  4. 2. Expansion of Creole Society in the North
  5. 3. Divergent Paths in the Lowcountry
  6. 4. Devolution in the Lower Mississippi Valley
  7. II. SLAVE SOCIETIES: The Plantation Generations
  8. 5. The Tobacco Revolution in the Chesapeake
  9. 6. The Rice Revolution in the Lowcountry
  10. 7. Growth and the Transformation of Black Life in the North
  11. 8. Stagnation and Transformation in the Lower Mississippi Valley
  12. III. SLAVE AND FREE: The Revolutionary Generations
  13. 9. The Slow Death of Slavery in the North
  14. 10. The Union of African-American Society in the Upper South
  15. 11. Fragmentation in the Lower South
  16. 12. Slavery and Freedom in the Lower Mississippi Valley
  17. Epilogue: Making Race, Making Slavery
  18. Tables

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