Slavery and Human Progress

Slavery and Human Progress PDF Author: David Brion Davis
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 402

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Book Description
Pulitzer Prize-winner David Brion Davis here provides a penetrating survey of slavery and emancipation from ancient times to the twentieth century. His trenchant analysis puts the most recent international debates about freedom and human rights into much-needed perspective. Davis shows that slavery was once regarded as a form of human progress, playing a critical role in the expansion of the western world. It was not until the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries that views of slavery as a retrograde institution gained far-reaching acceptance. Davis illuminates this momentous historical shift from "progressive" enslavement to "progressive" emancipation, ranging over an array of important developments--from the slave trade of early Muslims and Jews to twentieth-century debates over slavery in the League of Nations and the United Nations. In probing the intricate connections among slavery, emancipation, and the idea of progress, Davis sheds new light on two crucial issues: the human capacity for dignifying acts of oppression and the problem of implementing social change.

Slavery and Human Progress

Slavery and Human Progress PDF Author: David Brion Davis
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 402

Get Book

Book Description
Pulitzer Prize-winner David Brion Davis here provides a penetrating survey of slavery and emancipation from ancient times to the twentieth century. His trenchant analysis puts the most recent international debates about freedom and human rights into much-needed perspective. Davis shows that slavery was once regarded as a form of human progress, playing a critical role in the expansion of the western world. It was not until the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries that views of slavery as a retrograde institution gained far-reaching acceptance. Davis illuminates this momentous historical shift from "progressive" enslavement to "progressive" emancipation, ranging over an array of important developments--from the slave trade of early Muslims and Jews to twentieth-century debates over slavery in the League of Nations and the United Nations. In probing the intricate connections among slavery, emancipation, and the idea of progress, Davis sheds new light on two crucial issues: the human capacity for dignifying acts of oppression and the problem of implementing social change.

The Problem of Slavery in Western Culture

The Problem of Slavery in Western Culture PDF Author: David Brion Davis
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0195056396
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 521

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Book Description
This classic Pulitzer Prize-winning book depicts the various ways the Old and the New Worlds responded to the intrinsic contradictions of slavery from antiquity to the early 1770s, and considers the religious, literary, and philosophical justifications and condemnations current in the abolition controversy.

Inhuman Bondage

Inhuman Bondage PDF Author: David Brion Davis
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0195339444
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 467

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Book Description
The author's lifetime of insight as the leading authority on slavery in the Western world is summed up in this compelling narrative that links together the profits of slavery, the pain of the enslaved, and the legacy of racism in a sweeping and compelling history of the institution of slavery in the United States. By the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Problem of Slavery in Western Culture.

The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Emancipation

The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Emancipation PDF Author: David Brion Davis
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0307389693
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 450

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Book Description
Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award 2014 With this volume, Davis presents the age of emancipation as a model for reform and as probably the greatest landmark of willed moral progress in human history. Bringing to a close his staggeringly ambitious, prizewinning trilogy on slavery in Western culture Davis offers original and penetrating insights into what slavery and emancipation meant to Americans. He explores how the Haitian Revolution respectively terrified and inspired white and black Americans, hovering over the antislavery debates like a bloodstained ghost. He offers a surprising analysis of the complex and misunderstood significance the project to move freed slaves back to Africa. He vividly portrays the dehumanizing impact of slavery, as well as the generally unrecognized importance of freed slaves to abolition. Most of all, Davis presents the age of emancipation as a model for reform and as probably the greatest landmark of willed moral progress in human history.

Capitalism and Slavery

Capitalism and Slavery PDF Author: Eric Williams
Publisher: UNC Press Books
ISBN: 1469619490
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 308

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Book Description
Slavery helped finance the Industrial Revolution in England. Plantation owners, shipbuilders, and merchants connected with the slave trade accumulated vast fortunes that established banks and heavy industry in Europe and expanded the reach of capitalism worldwide. Eric Williams advanced these powerful ideas in Capitalism and Slavery, published in 1944. Years ahead of its time, his profound critique became the foundation for studies of imperialism and economic development. Binding an economic view of history with strong moral argument, Williams's study of the role of slavery in financing the Industrial Revolution refuted traditional ideas of economic and moral progress and firmly established the centrality of the African slave trade in European economic development. He also showed that mature industrial capitalism in turn helped destroy the slave system. Establishing the exploitation of commercial capitalism and its link to racial attitudes, Williams employed a historicist vision that set the tone for future studies. In a new introduction, Colin Palmer assesses the lasting impact of Williams's groundbreaking work and analyzes the heated scholarly debates it generated when it first appeared.

Booker T. Washington and Black Progress

Booker T. Washington and Black Progress PDF Author: W. Fitzhugh Brundage
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780813028149
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 236

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Book Description
Inspired by the centenary of the publication of Washington's autobiography, Up From Slavery, this collection of essays reinterprets Washington's career and self-presentation. As the most visible and widely acclaimed black leader of his era, Washington played a pivotal role in advocating a strategy for the racial uplift of African Americans in an age of intensifying racism and discrimination. This collection insists that in order to understand the era of Jim Crow, we must come to terms with Washington and his autobiography. It uses Washington, his autobiography, and his program to consider the meanings of Up From Slavery, the plight of African Americans, and possible responses by blacks in the United States and elsewhere to the highest stage of white supremacy. Collectively and individually, these essays shed light on aspects of Washington and his life that have been poorly understood. Neither a critique nor an apologia, Booker T. Washington and Black Progress offers fresh perspectives by leading scholars on one of the most remarkable and influential figures in turn-of-the-century America, providing a new appreciation of both the man and his times.

The Radical and the Republican

The Radical and the Republican PDF Author: James Oakes
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 9780393061949
Category : African American abolitionists
Languages : en
Pages : 366

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Book Description
Opponents at first, Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln gradually became allies, each influenced by and attracted to the other. James Oakes brings these two iconic figures to life and sheds new light on the central issues of slavery, race and equality in Civil War America.

Challenging the Boundaries of Slavery

Challenging the Boundaries of Slavery PDF Author: David Brion DAVIS
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674030257
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 128

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Book Description
"This book views slavery in a new light and underscores the human tragedy at the heart of the American story."--Jacket

Compendium of the Impending Crisis of the South

Compendium of the Impending Crisis of the South PDF Author: Hinton Rowan Helper
Publisher: Gale Cengage Learning
ISBN:
Category : Slavery
Languages : en
Pages : 224

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Book Description
This book condemns slavery, by appealed to whites' rational self-interest, rather than any altruism towards blacks. Helper claimed that slavery hurt the Southern economy by preventing economic development and industrialization, and that it was the main reason why the South had progressed so much less than the North since the late 18th century.

Slavery and Society at Rome

Slavery and Society at Rome PDF Author: Keith Bradley
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 131613914X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 218

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Book Description
This book, first published in 1994, is concerned with discovering what it was like to be a slave in the classical Roman world, and with revealing the impact the institution of slavery made on Roman society at large. It shows how and in what sense Rome was a slave society through much of its history, considers how the Romans procured their slaves, discusses the work roles slaves fulfilled and the material conditions under which they spent their lives, investigates how slaves responded to and resisted slavery, and reveals how slavery, as an institution, became more and more oppressive over time under the impact of philosophical and religious teaching. The book stresses the harsh realities of life in slavery and the way in which slavery was an integral part of Roman civilisation.