Many Thousands Gone by Ira Berlin (1998)

Question 1

“This book is in part an attempt to address that problem”

What problem is Berlin referring to? What does he attribute the problem to?

Answer 1

The “reluctance to embrace new understanding of race as socially constructed” by the general public. Berlin attributes this to the “failure to demonstrate how race is continually redefined, who does the defining, and why.” I.e. Racecraft. (pg. 1)

Question 2

What is “the design of American captivity”

Answer 2

“The extraction of labor that allowed a small group of men to dominate all.” (pg. 5)

Question 3

What are Berlin’s four distinct slave societies (regions)

Answer 3

The North; the Chesapeake region; the coastal lowcountry of SC, GA, and FL; lower Mississippi Valley (pg. 7)

Question 4

“Societies with slaves” vs. “slave societies”

Answer 4

In SWS, enslaved people were “marginal to the central productive processes; slavery was just one form of labor among many.” In SS, “slavery stood at the center of economic production, and the master-slave relationship provided the model for all social relations”(pg. 8)

Question 5

What might transform a SWS into SS?

Answer 5

The discovery of a saleable commodity and the seizure of power by the slaveholding class (pg. 9)

Question 6

What are the “two markers critical for understanding the first two centuries of slavery”?

Answer 6

The two markers are

(1) The distinction b/w “societies with slaves” and “slave societies”
(2) The revolutionary period and the growth of democracy (pg. 7)

Question 7

What are the four generations of slavery identified by Berlin?

Answer 7

Charter -> Plantation -> Revolutionary -> Migration