Customer Reviews

The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Revolution, 1770-1823

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It's odd that (as of this writing) David Brion Davis' "Problem of Slavery in the Age of Revoution" has no Amazon reviews. Granted that it is not young: my copy bears a puublication date of 1975, which is positively Jurassic in terms of current academic writing (there is a later edition). But that is, perhaps, the point it is Davis (in company with his sometimes Yale colleague, Vann Woodward) who taught us what we know about slavery-and if we know more than they did, it is because of what they taught us. Davis is what our professors read when they went to school-perhaps even more, our professors' professors. The giveaway is in the Amazon listing of books that cite this book. At this writing, there are 145: skim the list and you see a virtually comprehensive library of modern academic writing on the subject.

Davis is not always a delight to read. His style is discursive, somewht elliptical, after the manner of a beloved senior professor in his seminar room (his discussion of Somerset's Case is maddening in its indirection). He can seem to sprawl: indeed it is precisely this tendency to sprawl which leads me to prefer "Age of Revolution" to its companion piece, "The Problem of Slalvery in Western Culture." But the difficulty of pinning him down means also that he doesn't lend himself to soundbytes or oversimplifications.

There are other indispensable names in the literature of slavery: Fogel and Engerman, surely, and Eugene Genovese (and, I suppose, Faulkner's `Absalom, Absalom!"). But any shelf on the topic without Davis has a very gaping hole, indeed.

Davis is one of the most influencial slavery historians with us today. This book is one of his two best. His later works are meant to appeal more to the wider audience who prefer nooks to be like TV programs which require a two minute attention span. If you want a glib and easy reading history, don't buy this. You won't like it or do it justice. If you want an insightful, interesting, scholarly read to increase your knowledge of a most important subject, you need this book.