| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 111.3

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 111.3 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Comparative/World

Pamela Scully and Diana Paton, editors. Gender and Slave Emancipation in the Atlantic World. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press. 2005. Pp. vi, 376. Cloth $84.95, paper $23.95.
In this thought-provoking collection of essays, the contributors explore several interconnected questions about former slave societies of the Western Hemisphere as well as those in West and South Africa. The first question, broadly put, is what did freedom mean to those who had long been denied it? Second, how did the ex-slaves' definitions of being free differ from those expressed in elite discourses? The contributors underscore how concerns about ideal gender roles strongly shaped the actions of both the emancipated and the emancipators as each group strived to mold new relationships with the other.	1
As slavery was an institution rooted in the exploitation of labor, the first freedom asserted by ex-slaves was to leave the employ of their masters and to seek work elsewhere or under a substantially improved contract. (Essays by Ileana Rodríguez-Silva on Puerto Rico and Bridget Brereton on the British Caribbean clearly outline such efforts.) An important attendant liberty entailed creating new personal ties of family or reconstructing older ties that had been broken by forced removal to an owner's work site. Throughout the Atlantic world, former slaves asserted the right to marry whom they pleased, or (as in the case of West Africa) the right to divorce partners acquired as a slave. (Pamela Scully on South Africa, Martin Klein and Richard Roberts on West Africa, and Marek Steedman on Louisiana address the contested nature of these asserted liberties.)	. . .

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