Overview

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.""

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9781804293416

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Reviews

A landmark of twentieth-century historiography. -- David Brion Davis * New York Review of Books * Sombre, dark and masterly. -- Linda Colley * Independent on Sunday *

Praise for The Overthrow of Colonial Slavery * : * One of the finest studies of slavery and abolition. -- Eric Foner * Dissent * Praise for The Making of New World Slavery * : * Blackburn's book has finally drawn the veil which concealed the history of modem society. -- Darcus Howe * Guardian * A landmark of twentieth-century historiography. -- David Brion Davis * New York Review of Books * Sombre, dark and masterly. -- Linda Colley * Independent on Sunday *

One of the finest studies of slavery and abolition. -- Eric Foner * Dissent (for The Overthrow of Colonial Slavery) * Blackburn's book has finally drawn the veil which concealed the history of modem society. -- Darcus Howe * Guardian (for The Making of New World Slavery) * A landmark of twentieth-century historiography. -- David Brion Davis * New York Review of Books (for The Making of New World Slavery) * Sombre, dark and masterly. -- Linda Colley * Independent on Sunday (for The Making of New World Slavery) *

Author Information

Robin Blackburn is emeritus professor at the University of Essex. His other books include The Making of New World Slavery: 1492-1800, The American Crucible, The Overthrow of Colonial Slavery: 1776-1848 and an essay on Abraham Lincoln and Karl Marx, An Unfinished Revolution.

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