Reviewed by Cassandra Pybus | Reviews | Journal of American Ethnic History, 29.1

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Reviewed by Cassandra Pybus | Reviews | Journal of American Ethnic History, 29.1 | The History Cooperative

Reviews

Slavery, Resistance, Freedom. Edited by Gabor Borritt and Scott Hancock. New York: Oxford University Press, 2007. xix + 165 pp. Map and notes. $24.95 (cloth).

The collection of essays in Slavery, Resistance, Freedom strikes a dispirited note in this historic year. The tone is set by a superb essay by Ira Berlin to make the case that American history cannot be understood without understanding slavery. The surge of interest in slavery studies, of which this book is part, he tells us, is a response to a "crisis of race" (p. 8). From that moment of founding, he reminds us, "the centrality of slavery in the American past is manifest" (p. 7). It is no accident that the author of the Declaration of Independence and the first president were both slaveholders, since the nation founded on the principles of freedom was underpinned by chattel slavery. Ever since, race has been the country's most pervasive political and social problem. Indeed, Berlin argues, the nation has become "more racially segregated, more unequal, as a previous generation's remedies for segregation and inequality become unacceptable" (p. 8).

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