Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made [Paperback]

Eugene D. Genovese (Author)

Book Description

Release date: January 12, 1976

A reevaluation of the master-slave relationship in American history.

Editorial Reviews

Review

This weighty book intends to "tell the story of slave life as carefully and accurately as possible." Less given over to theoretical and topical polemic than Genovese's earlier works on Southern slavery, it is by no means a catalogue. It amplifies Genovese's stress on the humanity slaves were able to preserve through de facto accommodations on the part of both slave and master, through the reciprocal play of "elementary human reactions" across class and color lines, and through the slaves' "strong sense of stewardship" for one another. This is a necessary transcendence of many other historians' dehumanizing view of both slaves and slaveholders, and to it Genovese brings his intellectual expansiveness and depth of feeling as he further documents key points featured in The World the Slaveholders Made (1969) and The Red and the Black (1972): the resourcefulness and egalitarianism of many house servants, the protective, responsible character of many black drivers, the prevalence of family stability and the nourishment Christianity afforded against degradation. Some critics will argue persuasively that Genovese has not done justice to southern slavery's deprivation, brutality and murder. As a matter of page-by-page arithmetic, Genovese certainly places more weight on young folks' play by the cabin door than on "evidence of widespread dirt-eating." The question - raised very differently by Fogel and Engerman in Time on the Cross (KR, p. 220), whose econometric inferences crosshatch Genovese's view - is one of method and concept in shaping the evidence. The subject will be pursued in debates, and anyone concerned with human development should read Genovese's book to knowledgeably participate. (Kirkus Reviews) --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From the Inside Flap

A reevaluation of the master-slave relationship in American history.

Product Details

• Paperback: 864 pages
• Publisher: Vintage (January 12, 1976)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0394716523
• ISBN-13: 978-0394716527
• Product Dimensions: 5.2 x 1.5 x 8.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (18 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #203,892 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

32 of 37 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A Tour de Force of American History July 22, 2006

By Herbert L Calhoun

Format:Paperback

Thorough, nuanced, psychoanalytic and balanced; a tour de force: A prodigious work of American Historical scholarship.

Genovese has done us all a great service and we should be immensely grateful to him for producing this masterpiece on one of the most unpleasant periods of American history.

Even with some of the correctly pointed out shortcoming noted by other reviewers, Roll, Jordan, Roll still deserves a place in the Panthenon of American Historical Scholarship -- along side John Hope Franklin's From Slavery to Freedom.

I strongly disagree with other reviewer's that the author's conscious racist bias has somehow seeped in, flawed, colored and otherwise helped frame the context. To the extent this is true at all, it is almost certainly done unconsciously. However, to the author's credit, it must be pointed out that time after time he has drawn a wide berth around the context (one reviewer referred to this as over-contextualizing) just so that the reader can decide for himself what the true nature of the substance is. The scholarship in this volume is so cleanly done that a charge of racist bias frankly is almost incongruous.

For instance in discussing southern paternalism (referenced by an earlier reviewer), the section is prefaced with the following introductory paragraph:

"Cruel, unjust, exploitative, oppressive, slavery bound two peoples together in bitter antagonism while creating an organic relationship so complex and ambivalent that neither could express the simplest human feelings without reference to the other."

The author then goes on to say that:

"Southern paternalism, like every other paternalism, had little to do with Ole Massa's ostensible benevolence, kindness, and good cheer.... It grew out of the necessity to discipline and morally justify a system of exploitation."

None of this strikes me as the easily recognizable and consciously slanted racist tripe we are all so accustomed to by racist apologist American historians. On the contrary, Genovese appeals to a need for the reader to think more deeply about the broader outlines of the context of this two-way subhuman drama. He asks us to see in fact how slavery entrapped both slave and master into a subhuman form of existence, out of which a normalized dynamics had to, and eventually did evolve, and did so organically. And if there was ever any doubt about the author's position then the following point made in the same section on paternalism should have put such doubts to rest:

"But southern slave society was not merely one more manifestation of some abstraction called racist society. Its history was essentially determined by particular relationships of class power in racial form."

By my way of thinking, this is drawing out and exhibiting the kind of complexity one is unlikely to find in any American history book anywhere, and on any subject -- not to mention on discussions about race and racism. Even the fact that there is an element of Marxist analysis lurking in the background does not bother me because it is appropriate and honestly applied - in the same way that WEB Du Bois applied it in his analysis of Reconstruction (See my review on Amazon.com).

But more importantly, every page and every paragraph in this book is treated with the same incredible depth and scholarly sophistication. Nothing is left to chance; polemics and BS do not have a chance to enter the equation in this manuscript. The analysis throughout is solid, transparent, devastatingly clear and packed with information.

If there is a better book in print, please refer me to it.

Fifty stars.

Reviewer: Herbert L. Calhoun, Ph.D. is the author of the forthcoming " Cultures Shamed, Cultures Denied, and Cultures Erased: The Long-term Impact of Racism on American culture." Read more ›

51 of 64 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Thorough account of Slavery in America September 17, 1998

By [e-mail]

Format:Paperback

"Roll, Jordan, Roll," by Eugene D. Genovese goes into great detail on the subject. While Genovese is hardly an apologist for Southern slaveholders, he fully documents their case, citing numerous sociologists and historians who state that the physical living conditions of most slaves exceeded that of the working poor of Europe (and in many cases America as well). Virginia planters such as the people I descend from tended to treat their slaves better than those on the frontier or people like the ancestors of Edward Ball (Slaves in the Family), who owned enormous rice plantations. Don't get the idea that anyone gets off easy. The hypocracy and cruelty of the slaveholder class is documented in painful detail. The book is at times overly academic, but Genovese quotes extensively from court decisions, slaveholder correspondence and accounts by former slaves and those who fought for their freedom. Whether your interest in the subject is academic or personal, I doubt you will find a more thoroughly documented account of America's most "peculiar" institution.

60 of 77 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars The last word in documenting slave culture August 2, 2000

By A Customer

Format:Paperback

Genovese's work, while extremely long and, I think pretentious at times in its tone, it is extemely well researched and is currently the last word on slave culture and the interaction between master and slave on southern plantations.

One of his most striking observations that I can still rember reading even after five years is his concept of paternalism and how masters and slaves viewed the concept differently.

Masters felt it was their duty to take care of their "children" the slaves by providing food and certain privilages, like whisky on Christmas and New Years. In return, masters expected obedience, but even more crucually, love in return. Slaves on the other hand saw those "privilages" as rights and would act up if certain privilages were taken away. When emancipation came, Genovese argues, that masters were really quite emotionally hurt when their slaves decided to run away--the masters came to see themselves as the only way that their "children" could survive. The hurt was even more acute when the slaves joined up with the union army to attack the very plantations and masters that took care of them. One can easily see how this feeling of ungratefulness could lead to cruelty and violence in the south following the civil war.

When I was in college a few years back, this book was seen by my professors as _the_ final word on the subject of 19th century slave culture

23 of 30 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars milestone cultural history book--a fascinating discussion !! May 13, 2000

By Robert Nagle

Format:Paperback

This was one of the most interesting books I have read in history (up there with Darnton's The Great Cat Massacre). There is the tendency to view blacks of slavery times as victims and victims only; this book conveys the richness of the culture and more importantly their humanity; The chapters on courtship rituals were extremely entertaining and fascinating. I haven't read widely of the time period, but this ranks as the best of what I've read so far.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Roll, Jordan, Roll: Pivotal Work, Now Dated. March 4, 2009

By Publius

Format:Paperback

The foundation of the master-slave relationship, according to Genovese, rested on the ideology of paternalism. Within the highly complex social strata of the American Slave South, the cultural hegemony of the master class and its articulation of organic reciprocity at once reinforced and mediated power disparities in race and class. Trading the loyalty and absolute obedience of their slave property for a professed benevolence and basic material needs, the slaveholding master class sought to make the institution of slavery more humane and more capable of withstanding challenges to its survival. In the process, the author argues that paternalism came to define both master and slave in a dialectic fashion. Relying on the absolute obedience of the slaves, masters came to frame their self-identities as enlightened patriarchs worthy of praise and emulation in the pantheon of civility. Slaves, on the other hand, collectively asserted themselves for recognition of their own humanity. In the context of unequal power relations, Genovese suggests that the latter result constituted no small victory. Although it was indeed far from overthrowing the shackles of bondage, such concessions constituted blatant evidence of group agency and the willingness of slaves to assert their humanity among the most abject of conditions.

Even as a synthetic work more than three decades old, 'Roll, Jordan, Roll' remains an impressive work filled with big ideas and pathbreaking themes. Its willingness to examine the worldview of both master and slave in a comparative framework constituted a fruitful first step in understanding the relational complexities of power to culture. Attempting to go beyond the works of Abtheker, Gutman, and Stampp, Genovese's insistence on resurrecting the ghost of U.B.... Phillips long enough to take the master class's contradictions and self-delusions seriously was daring and, in many respects, at once perplexing and somewhat misunderstood by numerous critics. While the crux of 'Roll, Jordan, Roll' has made its way into most studies on southern slavery since its debut, in one form or another, the master-slave dynamic continues to be a powerful one that finds eager scholars and audiences willing to wrestle with its shock value, absurdities, inconsistencies, regional variances, and the like. No matter what faults subsequent historians attribute to it, after Genovese's work it has become unthinkable to conceive of either party within a historical vacuum.

The burden of time has complicated the modern reading of 'Roll, Jordan, Roll'. For one thing, a wave of scholarship has convincingly argued that the relationship of southern slaveholding to the market economy and that masters were vastly more capitalist oriented businessmen than Genovese's argument suggests, gives the work at times an almost stubborn and naïve bend. To read his assertions within the context of these newer studies is to find the oftentimes perplexing monolithic portrait of slavery from the Upper to Lower South across time and space; a minimization of the impact of transatlantic market influences fostered by goods, Enlightenment print culture and interaction; and an account absent the complexities that positioned slavery in tension with abolition across continents, cultures, and entire hemispheres. More sophisticated studies have, and must continue, to account for the incontrovertible fact that southern slavery varied widely under an otherwise all-encompassing umbrella in all but name only. Read more ›