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Betty Wood
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Slavery in Colonial America, 1619–1776 (The African American Experience Series) Kindle Edition

by Betty Wood (Author) Format: Kindle Edition
4.5 4.5 out of 5 stars 39 ratings
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Slavery in Colonial America, 1619–1776 brings together original sources and recent scholarship to trace the origins and development of African slavery in the American colonies. Distinguished scholar Betty Wood clearly explains the evolution of the transatlantic slave trade and compares the regional social and economic forces that affected the growth of slavery in early America. In addition, Wood provides a window into the reality of slavery, presenting an accurate picture of daily life throughout the colonies. As slavery became more ingrained in American society, Wood examines early forms of slave rebellion and resistance and how the reliance on enslaved labor conflicted with the ideals of a nation calling for freedom and liberty.

Succinct and engaging, Slavery in Colonial America, 1619–1776 is essential reading for all interested in early American and African American history.
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  1. ISBN-13
    978-0742544185
  2. Sticky notes
    On Kindle Scribe
  3. Publisher
    Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
  4. Publication date
    March 11, 2005
  5. Part of series
    The African American Experience
  6. Language
    English
  7. File size
    1993 KB
  8. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

Review

Slavery in Colonial America offers a concise yet incisive introduction to recent research. Illustrated with carefully chosen selections from primary documents, it is well adapted to classroom use. Betty Wood's text offers a thoughtful summary of the main themes bound up with the adoption and renunciation of slavery in colonial America, paying full attention to experiences of the enslaved. Wood situates the development of slavery in British North America within the context of an emerging Atlantic World. -- Peter G. Thompson, National Defense University

Finally, the perfect book for teaching undergraduates about colonial era slavery: brief, well-written, up-to-date, and all the useful extras every teacher will want. -- Sally E. Hadden, Florida State University

Betty Wood's ambitious reconceptualization of unfree labor in the English mainland colonies, which rightly places the focus on the enslaved and their strategies of survival and resistance, should enlighten specialists and students alike. Wood's engaging prose and elegant organization skillfully contextualizes the thirty-two documents included here and makes this study a natural for classroom use. -- Douglas R. Egerton

Slavery has a long history in America. Most of that history happened in the colonial period. To understand America we need to understand slavery and to understand slavery we have to know what it was like between 1619 and 1776, when most enslaved persons were African, when the transatlantic slave trade flourished and when relatively few enslaved persons were Christian. Betty Wood, one of the foremost scholars of slavery in this crucial period, has provided us with a brilliant synthesis of the best scholarship on colonial slavery in this much-needed book. Slavery in Colonial America is the ideal introduction to the most significant institution in early American history. Its combination of succinct and up-to-date summaries of the salient facts about colonial slavery and aptly chosen documents illustrating the not-very-peculiar institution give students all they need to understand a very important topic. This is the best book in its field and is much welcomed. -- Trevor Burnard, University of Sussex

Betty Wood provides us with a powerful and moving account of colonial American slavery not only as a social institution and a labor system but also as a profoundly human experience of exploitation and endurance. The reader emerges with a new understanding of the complexity of race relations in the 17th and 18th centuries and a new appreciation for the tensions between the rhetoric of freedom and the reality of enslavement. -- Carol Berkin, Baruch College and The Graduate Center, CUNY

The best book of its type in the field. ― History: The Journal Of The American Historical Association

Betty Wood provides a sweeping survey of slavery across colonial America in this brief, highly readable, and informative volume. She has brought together the diverse strands that make up the tragic history of African enslavement from New England to the Southern colonies and woven them into a compelling narrative. A selection of important primary documents and a bibliographic essay make the volume an ideal introduction for students. -- Randy Sparks, director of the Deep South Regional Humanities Center, Tulane University

Betty Wood provides a concise yet insightful synthesis of this literature while carefully pointing out some of the more important and significant interpretations along the way. . . . Slavery in Colonial America offers both expert and the novice a compelling account of the history of race based slavery throughout the colonial period. . . . While this volume ought to find a wide popular audience, some of the supplementary materials included at the end of the volume, specifically the selected primary documents that correspond with each chapter and the bibliographic essay, make this brief synthesis quite promising for use in the college classroom, where it will allow coming generations of students to grasp the beauty, strength, and horror of the African American experience of race-based slavery throughout colonial America. -- Richard Bailey, University of Kentucky

About the Author

Betty Wood is a reader in American history at the University of Cambridge and a fellow at Girton College, Cambridge.

Product details

  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ B00C0WEEUS
  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Rowman & Littlefield Publishers (March 11, 2005)
  • Publication date ‏ : ‎ March 11, 2005
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • File size ‏ : ‎ 1993 KB
  • Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
  • Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
  • Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
  • Print length ‏ : ‎ 148 pages
  • Page numbers source ISBN ‏ : ‎ 0742544192
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.5 4.5 out of 5 stars 39 ratings

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Betty Wood

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Customer reviews

4.5 out of 5 stars
4.5 out of 5
39 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Cristina
5.0 out of 5 stars I love the fact that when i highlighted parts of the ...
Reviewed in the United States on March 15, 2018
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I love the fact that when i highlighted parts of the book it wouldn't bleed through on the next page.
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Shoe Dude
5.0 out of 5 stars Outstanding
Reviewed in the United States on July 30, 2013
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Read this book. You won't be sorry. A good look at aspects of the african experience in America prior to the consolidation of slave codes around and afther the 1776 independence era.
One person found this helpful
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Alice Banks
5.0 out of 5 stars Five Stars
Reviewed in the United States on November 24, 2014
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This was for a school assignment
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Nico Vela
4.0 out of 5 stars I found this to be a nice supplement to the course itself
Reviewed in the United States on September 14, 2016
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Having read this book for a class on Colonial and Revolutionary U.S. History, I found this to be a nice supplement to the course itself, and very enlightening on a subject that has, apparently, been ignored during the time period.
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T. Pangle
3.0 out of 5 stars Good summary of slavery, but her theories are a little iffy.
Reviewed in the United States on March 10, 2007
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The light in which slavery is commonly looked at in the United States is as a precursor to the American Civil War; however, British historian Betty Wood takes a different approach to the institution in the book Slavery in Colonial America, 1619-1776. In this text, Wood takes a look at slavery in the colonies and it's implications on the American Revolution, as opposed to the Civil War. Wood proclaims that Slavery in Colonial America is intended to be a book "for those coming to the subject for the first time"(p. vii); a beginners guide to American slavery.

The first part of the book deals with why Africans were chosen as the preferred race of slaves. Author's purpose in writing this book is to show the reader that the colonists in America decided upon African slaves as the basis for the institution based on race, rather than economy. This theory is a little shaky and outdated. It completely disregards the fact that freed blacks also owned African slaves. It is hard as an outsider to look into American society and see anything other than racial tensions, but in early colonial America race was not the most important factor; Christianity most probably trumped race.

During the second part of the book, Wood focuses on the question: "could the American Patriots who were demanding their own freedom, and resting their case for that freedom on natural rights and equality of all mankind, legitimately hold 20 percent of the colonial population in perpetual, heritable slavery?" Wood goes into detail to explain how the compromise allowing slavery was labored over in colonial America. She briefs over the American Revolution and focuses on the role of the enslaved people in the conflict, both as aid to the colonists and as aid to the British. Wood shows how the American Revolution and the continuance of slavery shaped the future of the nation.

Betty Wood hails from Great Britain and is currently a reader in American history at the University of Cambridge. She has a PhD in history and focuses on slavery, race and gender issues in colonial America. In addition to Slavery in Colonial America, Wood published Slavery in Colonial Georgia, 1730-1775 in 1984, Women's Work, Men's Work: The Informal Slave Economies of Lowcountry Georgia, 1750-1830 in 1995, The Origins of American Slavery: The English Colonies, 1607-1700 in 1997 and Gender, Race and Rank in a Revolutionary Age: The Georgia Lowcountry, 1750-1820 in 2000. She has also co-authored many textbooks dealing with the subject of American slavery and gender.

Although Betty Wood has seemed to make the subject of slavery in colonial American her life's work, there is an alarming lack of primary sources in this book. There is a brief section at the end of the book including over twenty primary source documents; however, most of her citations in the bibliographic essay are secondhand. It is doubtful that Wood has slacked in research, it is a plausible conclusion therefore that Wood has skimmed her other books and research and pulled out only the basics of colonial slavery. She did state that this book was a beginner's look at American slavery. She may have simply just found the briefest and most frugal way to tell the bare essentials and give the reader an accurate picture of American colonial slavery without overburdening them with deciphers of primary sources.

While Wood makes a blatant statement that she believes race, not economy was the primary reason of choosing Africans for American slavery, many other historians would disagree. Robert William Fogel's Without Consent or Contract: The Rise and Fall of American Slavery, as well as his foregoing, notorious duet with Stanley L. Engerman, Time on the Cross, went into profound detail describing the economic benefits of slavery as an institution. While spending a very brief time on race, Without Consent or Contract demonstrates that racial problems evolved from African slavery, not that racial problems caused the enslavement of Africans. In this case, Betty Wood seems to be looking at the effect and trying to turn it into the cause. In a similarity, both Wood and Fogel agree that politics played a huge role in both the continuance and the demise of slavery. Wood spends a particular amount of time instilling in her reader that revolutionary politicians fought hard to keep slavery alive, whereas Fogel demonstrates that had in not be the veracious political fight against slavery, the institution would have continued to prosper.

With the retail price of $19.95, this book as a beginners guide seems to get the job done. One must be warned that Wood's emotional tongue could mislead people into romanticizing slavery, rather then portraying in as it truly was on the day to day level. There was a lack of depiction of slave life and an abundance of ideological theorization. However, through her work Wood is able to give a very basic description of slavery in colonial America as an institution and describe how it led up to and influence the American Revolution.

Teresa Pangle

November 2006
10 people found this helpful
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L
4.0 out of 5 stars I enjoyed reading the book
Reviewed in the United States on March 7, 2015
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The book shipped quick, it was bought for a class. I enjoyed reading the book. Not too difficult to read, and some parts were quite interesting.
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ghybel1975
3.0 out of 5 stars Book for college class.
Reviewed in the United States on August 9, 2015
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School book, not bad.
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EconGuy
3.0 out of 5 stars A mediocre introduction to Slavery in Colonial America
Reviewed in the United States on March 13, 2009
Slavery in Colonial America, 1619-1776 is about slavery. The thesis is "This book, which is intended for those coming to the subject for the first time, will examine the main themes that have emerged from this new research." The author also mentions the themes of the book when she says, "We begin by examining the ways in which racial ideologies, religious beliefs, and economic self-interest interacted in the different physical environments of the North American mainland to produce systems of slavery that were both similar and dissimilar." The author also refers to the impact of the Revolutionary War when she says, "The outcome of that war, and the political settlements of the 1780s, would help to seal the fate of African Americans for decades to come." This book is about how slavery changed the colonies in terms of economic demands influencing racial ideology (vii & xi).

This book is about slavery in colonial America with a focus on the slavery institution itself. England was influenced by Spain and Portugal for economic opportunities in the new world. Slaves were brought into the colonies for cheap labor. Slaves converted to Christianity through time and eventually gave up their ancient ritual beliefs, but their conversion to Christianity did not allow them to obtain their freedom. Wood also goes into the brutal aspects of slavery. Slave owners used branding irons on slaves' chests to identify to whom they belonged to. Slaves were also whipped when they disobeyed their master. If a slave attempted to run away and was caught, the slave owner might attach a chain with an iron ball attached to him or her, which would prevent the slave from running away. Slavery was organized in two different systems in the 1730s and 1740s; the Chesapeake area used the gang system and Carolina used the task system. The book also explains the impact of the rebellions that were always unsuccessful and became less common as years passed through colonial times. A slave might earn his or her freedom if he or she revealed a slave rebellion. Britain tried to use runaway slaves to their advantage during the American Revolution by offering them freedom in exchange for military service. The Revolutionary War ended and answered the question of whether or not slaves would obtain freedom by the slave institution remaining intact, which would later become an argument and finally be resolved in a half a century later with the result of the American Civil War. This book explores the slave institution and the inability of slaves to achieve their freedom.
This book has some credibility. The author uses a lot of primary sources in this book, such as journals and legal documents. The primary sources provide first hand accounts of the colonial era of slavery, which she lists in the Documents section. The author relies on her own interpretation from the primary sources most of the time instead of also using secondary sources to add more expertise. The author does use some secondary sources. This book lacks some credibility because the author does not use a bibliography section for the sources she used. The author also does not use endnotes, which makes information hard to check for accuracy. This book has some credibility because of the primary and secondary sources that are used.

Slavery in Colonial America, 1619-1776 is different from other books in its genre because it deals with several different topics and themes of slavery in each chapter. Slavery in Colonial America, 1619-1776 and The Time of Their Lives by James Deetz and Patricia Scott Deetz are similar in that they focus on a different topic in each chapter that do not necessarily follow the next chapter. Both books have a different perspective. The Time of Their Lives is from an archaeologist's perspective because it focuses on culture and Slavery in Colonial America, 1619-1776 is from a historian's perspective because it focuses on cause and effect. Wood also organizes her chapters by topics and each chapter is in chronological order instead of culture characteristic. The Deetzs' book mentions indentured servitude, which was similar to slavery because both were a form of bondage. The Time of Their Lives and Slavery in Colonial America, 1619-1776 have a similar explanation for the motive of bondage because they both emphasize it as a way for cheap labor.

This book has effective explanations. The author explains the problems she encounters in finding certain information. The author demonstrates this by saying, "The main problem in attempting to unravel the dynamics of reworking of traditional beliefs and rituals in different regions of mainland America, and forms that they eventually took, is the lack of sources. Autobiographies and other materials written by former slaves only began to appear during the second half of the eighteenth century, which means that for the entire colonial period there are only white accounts of varying degrees of objectivity." This explains the difficulties of attaining accurate primary sources because of the whites' bias towards slaves. The author is also good at explaining the effect that performing a certain action would have on both whites and slaves. She demonstrates the effect of putting rebellious slaves' heads on a pike by saying, "To slaves they provided an unmistakable example of the price they would pay for rebellion. To whites they suggested the ever-present possibility of rebellion and the need for them to be always on their guard." This book is good at explaining the availability of accurate sources and the effects of certain actions (49 & 64).

This book does have some negatives to it, which causes it to be a mediocre book. Some of her word choices are not effective enough. The author often uses the terms "whites and slaves" when she writes about the effect of putting slaves' heads on pikes. This is an ineffective way of presenting information by inferring that all whites would be affected by a slave uprising when she also mentions that effective slave uprisings were the result of slaves uprising with lower class whites. The only whites that would be reminded of the consequences are the slaveholders. The author also tries to cover a lot of information in a short amount of pages. For example, the author mentions Adam Smith's Wealth of Nation briefly without explaining the book's main argument on the economics of slavery. This book lacks important information and the author should have expanded on her ideas more (64).

Betty Wood has the credentials to write this book. She teaches history at the University of Cambridge and she is in the American history department with her area of study in continental slavery. The University of Cambridge is one of the top colleges in the United Kingdom. She has also written other books on slavery. Her notable title is The Origins of American Slavery: Freedom and Bondage in the American Colonies. Her expertise on the subject gives her the credentials to write this book.
Slavery in Colonial America, 1619-1776 is a mediocre book by an author with the proper credentials who provides an introductory to the concept of slavery. Despite the negatives of the book, this book also gives a good general summary of slavery. This book also explores the cause and effect slavery had in the colonies, and how the slavery concept became a racial issue and took years until people started questioning it as an evil. The book is also an easy read because it does not have a lot of pages. Overall this is a mediocre book that students should consider reading to have an introductory of slavery in colonial times because of the lack of information.
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