Overview

Pennsylvania contained the largest concentration of early America’s abolitionist leaders and organizations, making it a necessary and illustrative stage from which to understand how national conversations about the place of free blacks in early America originated and evolved, and, importantly, the role that colonization—supporting the emigration of free and emancipated blacks to Africa—played in national and international antislavery movements. Beverly C. Tomek’s meticulous exploration of the archives of the American Colonization Society, Pennsylvania’s abolitionist societies, and colonizationist leaders (both black and white) enables her to boldly and innovatively demonstrate that, in Philadelphia at least, the American Colonization Society often worked closely with other antislavery groups to further the goals of the abolitionist movement. In Colonization and Its Discontents, Tomek brings a much-needed examination of the complexity of the colonization movement by describing in depth the difference between those who supported colonization for political and social reasons and those who supported it for religious and humanitarian reasons. Finally, she puts the black perspective on emigration into the broader picture instead of treating black nationalism as an isolated phenomenon and examines its role in influencing the black abolitionist agenda.

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9780814783481

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( Colonization and Its Discontents challenges historians of the antebellum period to reconsider basic questions--questions about distinctions between abolitionist versus antislavery, between immediatist versus gradualist, and between competing versions of African colonization. By concentrating on the full spectrum of antislavery ideology within a single state and by questioning long-held assumptions, Tomek offers an expansive and revealing analysis of the antislavery impulse. )-(James Brewer Stewart), (James Wallace Professor of History, Emeritus, Macalester College)

Colonization and Its Discontents challenges historians of the antebellum period to reconsider basic questions--questions about distinctions between abolitionist versus antislavery, between immediatist versus gradualist, and between competing versions of African colonization. By concentrating on the full spectrum of antislavery ideology within a single state and by questioning long-held assumptions, Tomek offers an expansive and revealing analysis of the antislavery impulse.

"""Tomek offers a brilliant and provocative analysis of the antislavery network. This work is an extraordinary contribution to the historical understanding of American colonization."" Orville Vernon Burton, author of The Age of Lincoln ""Colonization and Its Discontents challenges historians of the antebellum period to reconsider basic questions--questions about distinctions between abolitionist versus antislavery, between immediatist versus gradualist, and between competing versions of African colonization. By concentrating on the full spectrum of antislavery ideology within a single state and by questioning long-held assumptions, Tomek offers an expansive and revealing analysis of the antislavery impulse."" James Brewer Stewart, James Wallace Professor of History, Emeritus, Macalester College ""Tomek makes a good case for examining Pennsylvania. The state's residents championed different varieties of colonization, as well as two other brands of anti-slavery activism (i.e. the ""gradualism"" associated with the Pennsylvania Abolition Society and the immediatism Associated with Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society). In illuminating the robust and diverse debate among anti-slavery Pennsylvanians, Tomek explicitly challenges Richard Newman's argument that the epicentre of the anti-slavery movement shifter from Pennsylvania to Massachusetts during the early antebellum period."" - Eric Burin, Journal of American Studies, November 2012"

Author Information

Beverly C. Tomek is Assistant Professor of History at the University of Houston-Victoria in Victoria, Texas.

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