Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America Book

A thorough, accessible and well-researched history of black slavery in colonial North America, prior to the Antebellum era. The book is divided by "generations": charter, plantation, and revolutionary, as well as by region. Berlin does a fine job connecting all of these threads into a coherent narrative, and Berlin notes that there were more slaves in North America at the end of the revolutionary era than at the beginning. Also at this time, few slaves grew cotton, lived in the south or embraced Christian beliefs. Berlin does not find any particular region where slavery was "moderate" or where racism wasn't prevalent. Although some slaves managed to make relative gains in improving their own condition, it was mostly by their own effort.

Berlin ably demonstrates the dynamics and diversity of the system and how it was affected by such factors as economic change, the American revolution, national politics, and international diplomacy. Berlin argues that slavery was less common in the north due to simple profit-related motives, rather than any notion that northerners were somehow "less" racist than southerners. He also emphasizes how slavery and racism fused into a relationship where one could not exist without the other, and how this resulted in more thorough exploitation of blacks from the colonial era all the way to the Civil War. He also finds little difference between slaves in the south and free blacks in the north, and emphasizes that conditions for slaves worsened as the institute expanded and became more systematic.

An interesting, rich and well-written volume with a strong if sometimes dry narrative.