The Making of New World Slavery: From the Baroque to the Modern, 1492-1800

The Making of New World Slavery argues that independent commerce, geared to burgeoning consumer markets, was the driving force behind the rise of plantation slavery. The baroque state sought--successfully--to feed upon this commerce and--with markedly less success--to regulate slavery and racial relations. To illustrate this thesis, Blackburn examines the deployment of slaves in the colonial possessions of the Portuguese, the Spanish, the Dutch, the English and the French. Plantation slavery is shown to have emerged from the impulses of civil society, not from the strategies of individual states.

Robin Blackburn argues that the organization of slave plantations placed the West on a destructive path to modernity and that greatly preferable alternatives were both proposed and rejected. Finally, he shows that the surge of Atlantic trade, predicated on the murderous toil of the plantations, made a decisive contribution to both the Industrial Revolution and the rise of the West.

Author: Robin Blackburn
Publisher: Verso
Published: 08/02/2010
Pages: 602
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 2.05lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.00w x 1.80d
ISBN13: 9781844676316
ISBN10: 1844676315
BISAC Categories:
- History | World | General
- Social Science | Slavery

About the Author
Robin Blackburn teaches at the New School in New York and the University of Essex in the UK. He is the author of many books, including The Making of New World Slavery, The Overthrow of Colonial Slavery, Age Shock, Banking on Death, and The American Crucible.

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