Generations of Captivity

A History of African-American Slaves

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by IRA Berlin

Harvard University Press

Due/Published September 2004, 384 pages, paper

ISBN 0674016246

New in paper (F04)

Berlin traces the history of African-American slavery in the United States from its beginnings in the seventeenth century to its demise nearly three hundred years later.

Most Americans, black and white, have a singular vision of slavery, one fixed in the mid-nineteenth century when most American slaves grew cotton, resided in the deep South, and subscribed to Christianity. Here, however, Berlin offers a dynamic vision, a major reinterpretation in which slaves and their owners continually renegotiated the terms of captivity. Slavery was thus made and remade by successive generations of Africans and African Americans who lived through settlement and adaptation, plantation life, economic transformations, revolution, forced migration, war, and ultimately, emancipation.

Connecting the "Charter Generation" to the development of Atlantic society in the seventeenth century, the "Plantation Generation" to the reconstruction of colonial society in the eighteenth century, the "Revolutionary Generation" to the Age of Revolutions, and the "Migration Generation" to American expansionism in the nineteenth century, Berlin integrates the history of slavery into the larger story of American life. He demonstrates how enslaved black people, by adapting to changing circumstances, prepared for the moment when they could seize liberty and declare themselves the "Freedom Generation."

Contents

 Prologue: Slavery and Freedom
1. Charter Generations
2. Plantation Generations
3. Revolutionary Generations
4. Migration Generations

Epilogue: Freedom Generations

Tables
Abbreviations
Notes
Acknowledgments
Index