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Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America

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To most Americans, including most scholars, slavery in the USA is usually thought of as chattel slavery associated with the plantation economies of the Antebellum South. This is a book on slavery in North America in the two centuries prior to the antebellum period. Berlin takes pains to present slavery over this extended period of time as historically dynamic and regionally diverse. Berlin is excellent at showing how changes in the Atlantic economy, political events such as the American Revolution, and international diplomacy all contributed to changes in the world experienced by slaves and slaveholders. This is true history from below emphasizing the experience of slaves. Berlin is particularly good at exploring the rich regional diversity of the slave experience in North America. This will simply be the standard book on this topic for decades to come. Written with grace, some passion, and an excellent bibliography.

Ira Berlin's MANY THOUSANDS GONE records the first two centuries of slavery in the present day United States AFTER European settlement. More thought-provoking and less dogmatic than Eugene Genovese's ROLL, JORDAN, ROLL, Berlin more fully makes the distinction between the various forms the system of slavery took in different regions and at different times in the period before Eli Whitney's Cotton Gin put new vigor into the old institution.

The book is broken down into three main parts: Societies with Slaves (or the Charter Generation), Slave Societies (or the Plantation Generation) and the Revolutionary Generation (ending in approximately 1810 to 1820). Within each of these time frames, the book looks at the peculiar ways in which the institution of slavery developed in Virginia and the Upper South, South Carolina and the Lower South, the North and the Lower Mississippi Valley (Louisiana and Florida). Further, each such chapter focuses on the evolution of slavery in each region within each generation.

The book compares indenturement (and apprenticeships) with slavery and also describes how the influx of Africans from interior Africa swamped the Atlantic Creole populace, contributing to the idea of racial superiority (of whites) and the development of ideas about miscegnation as a polluter of racial purity. The charter generation and later "creolized" generations were more likely to be able to win or purchase freedom whereas each influx of non-creolized Africans contributed to the "Africanization" of the black populace and to harsher restrictions on slaves and other black & biracial persons.

The book looks at de facto property-ownership among slaves and the development of the slave economy and its importance in the greater economy. Berlin also looks at the early interactions between the races (going so far as to point out that most persons of mixed race early on came not from relations between white masters and black slaves (whether or not consensual) but between indentured or lower class whites and slaves or free blacks. He also touches on the increasing competition between the white working class and blacks (enslaved and free) and the growth of vehement anti-black sentiments among working class whites.

Informative and stimulating, the book infrequently still tends to generalize such as with the implicit assumption of the general validity of the Woodson Thesis that free blacks generally tended to be more likely to own relatives - which was true (by law - see FREE BLACKS IN NORFOLK, VIRGINIA by Tommy L. Bogger) in places such as Virginia (where Carter Woodson's father James Henry Woodson hailed - see BLACK CONFEDERATES AND AFRO-YANKEES IN CIVIL WAR VIRGINIA by Ervin L. Jordan, Jr.) but was clearly not the case in places such as Louisiana and South Carolina (see THE FORGOTTEN PEOPLE by Gary B. Mills, BLACK SLAVEOWNERS by Larry Kroger and BLACK MASTERS by Michael P. Johnson & James L. Roark). Despite such expected errors in so comprehensive a work, MANY THOUSANDS GONE makes for a great read!

This book added a great deal to my knowledge of the first two centuries of slavery in North America. Berlin's primary document research is marvelous and the details that he was able to find out about slave life during this period are astounding. Berlin found out that the process of dehumanizing slaves was one that took time and varied from region to region, and he goes into specific economic and cultural factors that played the role in establishing and keeping slavery in the states.
Often the creation of the peculiar institution and the diversity of slave life is glossed over in textbooks. They ignore the important role that economic factors play from region to region. Berlin argues that the north did not have fewer slaves because northerners were more conscientious or less racist than southerners(as many would like to think), but because the majority of them simply could not profit as well from slave labor.

An excellent scholarly work that shows wide diversity in the lives of slaves durring the first two centuries of its existance.

The academic world has been waiting for this book for the last eighteen years. Berlin, already one of the dean's of slavery studies in America, has written a masterful study of the entire evolution of American slavery from it's very beginings to it's terrible highpoint, during the Ante-Bellum period in the South. The Genius of Berlin, however, is to understand this development in a way in which both the location of a slave and the time in which he or she lived affected his or her life. People who have studied slavery for too long have described it as a static experience, one that never elvolved, changed, or got better or worse. With his wonderful book, Berlin has ended all this and brought us into a new era of slavery studies. Many Thousands Gone is a fine book to take us into the next century as we continue to try to understand America.

The myth of slavery derives from the powerful images of the miniseries Roots; the notion that black people were simply swept out of their African lives, degraded and sometimes killed on the harsh way to America and then put to work on a cotton plantation without power of any sort.

Ira Berlin, in this beautifully written and thoroughly researched history of the first two hundred years of American slavery, "Many Thousands Gone", blows apart that myth. He says that slavery had great variety, based on geographic, economic and generational factors. The first generation of slaves in America were creoles, born of white and African American parents. They frequently lived along the sea and interacted with people of all walks of life, were traders and often spoke multiple languages. These slaves frequently stayed with their families, knew and utilized the courts to petition for freedom, they worked with their slave-owners to grow crops and to negotiate payment for their eventual freedom. This changed with subsequent generations who were plucked from central Africa and did not have the same experience with the white world. While slaves in these subsequent generations lost the power to negotiate the terms of their slavery with their slaveholders, they were able to grab autonomy in other ways. They grew and sold goods in cities, they purchased their freedom, though often at a high price. They escaped and formed maroon armed communities.

A few other factors also played a significant role in determining the virulence of slavery, specifically geography and economics. Some crops like cotton and tobacco were well suited to the plantation systems and in areas where those crops grew well, the slave system was particularly harsh. History was another factor. In the form of the American Revolution it disrupted the plantation system, because the plantation owners, who were often patriots with strong beliefs in the rights of man, also owned slaves and defended their right to do so. The loyalists took advantage of this dilemma and often had the plantation slaves fighting on the loyalist side in exchange for the promise of becoming free men. Sometimes they even delivered on that promise.

My only criticism is that I wanted more of a narrative that would bring together the various aspects of slavery. I was left with the feeling that American slavery was really Mississippi slavery or South Carolina slavery or New York slavery. The legacy of slavery appears to be monolithic even if the experience of slavery was not.

Ira Berlin in "Many Thousands Gone" has made a very important contribution to the growing literature attempting to understand both the big picture and the daily details of slavery. As his subtitle suggests, his work focuses on the first two centuries of slavery in North America.

Berlin's primary (and well-documented) thesis is that slave culture was not one monolithic culture, but several different cultures depending upon the era and the area of North American enslavement. Additionally, Berlin highlights that slavery was racist and classist, an interpretation which does not minimize the evils of racism, but also exposes the evils of classism.

Though in other works by the same author, readers find first-hand accounts of the horrors of slavery in the words of the enslaved, such documentation is less evident in this work. An increase in such documentation would have strengthened the already excellent "Many Thousand Gone." Still, the overall message and "feel" of "Many Thousands Gone" does accurately and powerfully depict the agony and inhumanity of African American slavery.

Berlin engages the important issue of the slave's choice of or refusal to choose the master's religion. Including a small sampling of the slave narratives (the majority of which evidence acceptance of Christianity) and the myriad slave conversion accounts, would have provided added depth to this fine book. Converting slaves, by their own accounts, did not see themselves as converting to their masters' religion. Instead, they saw themselves rejecting their masters' hypocritical distortion of Christianity and receiving Christ and Christianity, cleansed of lies and replete with the message of eternal freedom spirituality and internal freedom in Christ.

For the broad panorama of early enslavement, look no further than "Many Thousands Gone."

Reviewer: Bob Kellemen, Ph.D., is the author of Beyond the Suffering: Embracing the Legacy of African American Soul Care and Spiritual Direction , Soul Physicians, and Spiritual Friends.

Ira Berlin's MANY THOUSANDS GONE records the first two centuries of slavery in the present day United States AFTER European settlement. More thought-provoking and less dogmatic than Eugene Genovese's ROLL, JORDAN, ROLL, Berlin more fully makes the distinction between the various forms the system of slavery took in different regions and at different times in the period before Eli Whitney's Cotton Gin put new vigor into the old institution.

The book is broken down into three main parts: Societies with Slaves (or the Charter Generation), Slave Societies (or the Plantation Generation) and the Revolutionary Generation (ending in approximately 1810 to 1820). Within each of these time frames, the book looks at the peculiar ways in which the institution of slavery developed in Virginia and the Upper South, South Carolina and the Lower South, the North and the Lower Mississippi Valley (Louisiana and Florida). Further, each such chapter focuses on the evolution of slavery in each region within each generation.

The book compares indenturement (and apprenticeships) with slavery and also describes how the influx of Africans from interior Africa swamped the Atlantic Creole populace, contributing to the idea of racial superiority (of whites) and the development of ideas about miscegnation as a polluter of racial purity. The charter generation and later "creolized" generations were more likely to be able to win or purchase freedom whereas each influx of non-creolized Africans contributed to the "Africanization" of the black populace and to harsher restrictions on slaves and other black & biracial persons.

The book looks at de facto property-ownership among slaves and the development of the slave economy and its importance in the greater economy. Berlin also looks at the early interactions between the races (going so far as to point out that most persons of mixed race early on came not from relations between white masters and black slaves (whether or not consensual) but between indentured or lower class whites and slaves or free blacks. He also touches on the increasing competition between the white working class and blacks (enslaved and free) and the growth of vehement anti-black sentiments among working class whites.

Informative and stimulating, the book infrequently still tends to generalize such as with the implicit assumption of the general validity of the Woodson Thesis that free blacks generally tended to be more likely to own relatives - which was true (by law - see FREE BLACKS IN NORFOLK, VIRGINIA by Tommy L. Bogger) in places such as Virginia (where Carter Woodson's father James Henry Woodson hailed - see BLACK CONFEDERATES AND AFRO-YANKEES IN CIVIL WAR VIRGINIA by Ervin L. Jordan, Jr.) but was clearly not the case in places such as Louisiana and South Carolina (see THE FORGOTTEN PEOPLE by Gary B. Mills, BLACK SLAVEOWNERS by Larry Kroger and BLACK MASTERS by Michael P. Johnson & James L. Roark). Despite such expected errors in so comprehensive a work, MANY THOUSANDS GONE makes for a great read!

Slavery neither suddenly started, nor was inevitable in what became the United States. Also, as Ira Berlin's Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America (1998) indicates, primarily due to economic circumstances, slavery constantly changed and varied by time and place. Although not specifically included in his thesis, he also explains how slavery differed by sex and age. This is a study of Africans and African-Americans both free and enslaved. It looks at the "negotiation" of servant-master relationships, providing both with agency and with power over the other. As an occasional side note, Berlin traces the etymology of race. His synthesis of existing secondary literature is the first monograph that recognizes and uses these vital variables. Historiographically, this book is revolutionary because it challenges students of slavery to avoid monolithic analyzes. It is also significant because it focuses on the colonial, not antebellum, era.

Berlin looks for the roots and changes of slavery in both the Atlantic World and in the British North American colonies. Before the colonies committed themselves to slavery, Berlin considers them "societies with slaves": "the charter generation." Society had not completely dedicated its energies to using laborers from Africa. During this generation masters, Native-Americans, and Ladinos (or creoles) Africans often worked side-by-side. Like African slavery, slaves in the North could own property. African slavery was just one of many forms of servitude. Unlike their earlier counterparts, except for perhaps urban slaves, "the plantation generation" with "slave societies" limited the mobility and acculturation of slaves, as slaves were often Bozel Africans or directly from Africa. This new commitment was partly a result of cash crops. African slaves were more truly chattel and chances for freedom limited. The "revolutionary generation," paradoxically, experienced slavery's decline in the North and rise in the South. Conditions manumitted slaves encountered foreshadow those after 1865.

Any work of scholarship has its weaknesses. First, Berlin's subtitle is somewhat misleading: he does not explore the dynamics of slavery in all North American regions. Including the entire named region would require a discussion of slaves in Mexico, possibly Canada, and other countries or colonies north of the present-day Panama Canal. Second, although it may be beyond current evidence, despite the reference of census data, the lack of precise data--in this and other scholarly accounts of slavery--is frustrating for readers who seek a comprehensive understanding. In a book of 131,817 words, Berlin uses the word "some" 267 times, "many" 226 times, "most" 219 times, "about" 90 times, "generally" 81 times, "perhaps" 76 times, "several" 54 times, "estimate" 19 times, "usually" 18 times, "majority" 16 times, "probably" 14 times, "roughly" 7 times, and "approximately" 6 times. Statistically, 1 out of every 4.965 sentences has one of these words. Third, Berlin seems to focus too narrowly on social history; therefore, he does not fully reference relevant events or people (i.e., "the master") when describing the diversity of slavery. Bacon's Rebellion (1675-6) is important in explaining the shift from "societies with slaves" to "slave societies" in the Chesapeake region, for example, because the wealthy were not providing former indentured servants, who were now completing their terms, freedom dues. Explanations of the shift to a harsher and more engrained slave society could also be enhanced with a discussion of South Carolina's Negro Act of 1740, which was a response to the Stono Rebellion (1739). Fourth, Berlin seems to focus on the more positive evidence per se. For example, when discussing gradual abolition in northern areas, he does not discuss that masters could and did sell slaves to the South so that they would not gain freedom. Fifth, although not really a criticism, Berlin stops too soon. Readers are introduced to the complexities of slavery from approximately 1619-1810s, but an eight-page epilogue explaining the next fifty years of United States slavery is not satisfying. Perhaps future scholars can fill this gap. Future scholars also need to seek exact data. And a work on the scale and nature of The Jungle or The Conditions of the Working Class in England that explores the horrors of slavery would be useful.

Overall, Many Thousands Gone is an excellent book. Although Berlin does not incorporate archival research in this study, he shows mastery of a large body of important secondary literature. For a synthesis and study of this kind, archival research would not necessarily be the best approach and may well be impossible. Furthermore, Many Thousands Gone is one of those books that will require multiple slow and careful readings to come close to fully understanding and retaining the subject. Berlin's presentation of the evidence makes one question much of what college classes have taught. Complexity and variability provide a new generalization from which scholars should work.

I love this book. The previous reviewers who gave it 4+ stars are right on. Alas, for some reason the Kindle editors did not see fit to make the footnote numbers link to the footnotes. I'm a graduate student, I have to write a paper on the book, and reading the references after I've read the book is spoiling the experience for me. And it won't help my writing the paper!

Kindle needs to get on the ball with footnotes and make them accessible for all books. I've read some non-fiction/history that have easily accessible footnotes, but I would rather have bought the hard copy of this one.

A must read for students, but also a good read for the general history enthusiast.