AHR Forum

Crossing Slavery's Boundaries

Finding ways to understand the history of slavery is the central issue in this Forum. David Brion Davis presents the main essay on this critical but elusive subject. He draws on his experiences as a scholar and teacher to argue for a fundamental shift in our pedagogical and research approaches to slavery. Slavery must be studied, he insists, from a "big picture" to counter the parochialism that has dominated the subject, particularly in the United States. By a "big picture," he means that historians must cross the boundaries of colonies, nations, and regions to recover the history of slavery because the institution itself traversed the globe. Davis offers specific examples of how slavery can be studied and taught in a broad perspective. His examples make the development of the institution its central focus rather than its particular expression in a certain place or time. His expansive approach to the spatial and temporal history of slavery wins the endorsement and critical reflection of three commentators, Peter Kolchin, Rebecca J. Scott, and Stanley L. Engerman. They engage Davis's call for the transnational study of slavery by raising questions about the very notion of a broad perspective on slavery, the inherent problems of definition that bedevil any attempt to study slavery in transnational terms, the place of individual slaves and their experiences in such a "big picture history," and the relationship of slavery however broadly defined to various forms of unfree labor. Davis's passion to understand slavery infuses the entire Forum with a sense of mission and purpose. It compels us to reconsider not just how we teach and write about slavery, but how we think about past boundaries of all kinds.