Focus on This: slave conditions, pro-slavery vs. pro-abolition, slave resistence and rebellions, conditions for free Africa-Americans, comparisons between US and Latin America
Perspectives
Historiography of Slavery in the Americas
Ulrich B. Phillips
Kenneth Stampp
Frank Tannenbaum
Stanley Elkins
Carl Degler
Eugene Genovese
Kimberly Hanger
Historiography of Slavery in the Americas
The following includes short synopses of different historian's books on slavery. Their major thesis is included and sometimes even their main contentions, making this source helpful in collecting a variety of historian's views quickly for use in essays. Notice, though, the difference in time period and how this effects the view of the historian.
Ulrich B. Phillips American Negro Slavery (New York, 1928)
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In his book Phillips depicted American slavery as a system wherein slaves lived in families, were generally well cared for physically by maters, and were punished no more severely than recalcitrant children, unruly seamen, or white indentured servants. In common with most white southerners and most white scholars in the Western world of the early twentieth century, Phillips also believed that race determined human behavior to a considerable, though usually unspecified, extent. It is not surprising therefore that Phillips and the majority of American historians who followed his lead should see the inefficiencies of slavery and the social and moral behavior of blacks under slavery as a result of the Negro's race and not as a consequence of slavery.
Kenneth Stampp The Peculiar Institution: Slavery in the Antebellum South (New York, 1956)
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Stampp did not accept the biological inferiority of the Negro. In fact, in his book Stampp was quite explicit that he wrote his study of slavery on the assumption that "innately, Negroes are, after all, only white men with black skins, nothing more, nothing less." In place of a benign system, Stampp portrayed one in which punishment was harsh and constant, work onerous and continuous, and resistance by the slaves widespread and justified. Moreover, unlike Phillips, Stampp conclude that slavery was economically profitable to the whites.
Frank Tannenbaum Slave and Citizen: The Negro in the Americas (New York, 1946)
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A small book published by Frank Tannenbaum in 1947 which compared the practice of slavery in North and South America was responsible for opening up a major debate on the subject of slavery. Tannenbaum's major conclusion was that the Portuguese and Spanish colonies operating within different historical, legal, and religious traditions from that of the English colonies, developed a significantly different form of slavery. Latin slavery was probably milder, encouraged manumission, was abolished with less violence, and with a modern legacy of race relations which was non-racist. Specifically, Tannenbaum argued that in Latin America the slave was considered to be only an unfortunate victim of a historical accident which could happen to anyone. In Anglo America on the other hand, black slaves were conceived as degraded and less than human. In Latin America the long and active tradition of slavery in Portugal and Spain provided an elaborated legal and moral tradition which qualified and softened the power of master over slave. Catholicism argued that the slave possessed a soul and was equal in the eyes of God. The status of master was not exalted but an unfortunate consequence of the fall. In contrast, Anglo America practiced slavery without benefit of traditional constraints and was consequently, raw and brutal. Protestantism emphasized the dark and sinful countenance of the slave and the qualitative difference between the master and slave as reflected in their respective skin color - white and black.
Stanley Elkins Slavery: A Problem in American Institutional and Intellectual Life (Chicago, 1954)
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Elkins accepted as given a description of Negroes under slavery that the slaveholders themselves offered. This was the famous Sambo concept. Sambo, as Elkins described him, "was docile, but irresponsible, loyal but lazy, humble but chronologically given to lying and stealing, [accompanied by behavior] full of infantile silliness and talk inflated with childish exaggeration. His relationship with his master was one of utter dependence and childlike attachment: it was indeed this childlike quality that was the very key to his being." Elkins attributed it to the special character of slavery in the United States. He was able to do this with conviction because of a second part of his argument: the introduction of international comparison into the discussion of the nature of slavery. Relying upon Frank Tannenbaum's book, Slave and Citizen, published in 1947, Welkins contended that in Latin America, where blacks had also first entered as slaves, a Sambo type was not to be found. Moreover, Welkins went on, the severe social and psychological impact of Sambo was measured in the fact that after slavery was abolished there was no legal segregation of, or discrimination against, blacks in Latin American societies as there was in the United States. His central point was further emphasized when he asserted that the US slavery had much the same impact on blacks that the Nazi concentration camps had upon their inmates.
Carl Degler Neither Black nor White: Slavery and Race Relations in Brazil and the United States (New York, 1971)
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Carl Degler, in 1971, provided perhaps the most exhaustive and systematic critique of the Tannenbaum/Elkins thesis by comparing slavery in the United States and Brazil. Degler through his own research and review of the growing body of literature in Brazil and elsewhere came to the conclusion that if anything, the slave was treated even more harshly in Brazil than the United States. Degler argued that while state policy, law and church policy may indicate official intentions, these are not necessarily enforceable especially in rural areas where the latifundia system made slaveholders the masters of their local domain. Slaveholders ignored the law and rights of slaves and were generally in collusion with the local priesthood avoiding the sanctions of the church. Degler also mentions the significantly shorter life span of a slave in Brazil compared to a slave in the United States. Degler also argues that because of differences in the emigration pattern of the two countries and the relative number of blacks and whites, miscegenation was greater in Brazil. The resulting large class of mulattos made it difficult to institutionalize the patterns of segregation characteristics in the United States. Also, "... in a society in which the mulatto has a special place, a racist defense of slavery or of Negro inferiority cannot easily develop, for how can one think consistently of a white 'race' or a Negro 'race' when the lines are blurred by the mulatto?
Eugene Genovese Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made (New York, 1974)
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Genovese depicts a slave community that was quite autonomous, full of cultural and social variety, and controlled in only limited ways by the master. By implication, if not by intention, slavery is depicted in these recent studies as not only considerably less burdensome than Elkins contended with his concept of Sambo, but less onerous even than that described by Stampp.
Kimberly Hanger Bounded Lives and Bounded Places: Free Black Society in colonial New Orleans (North Carolina, 1997)
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Exploring the world and culture of colonial Spanish Louisiana's free blacks, Hanger develops the thesis that blacks fared considerably better under the Spanish system of slavery than any other. She argues that New Orleans's free blacks, in particular, "made their greatest advances in terms of demographics, privileges, responsibilities, and social standing" during the Spanish period. Hanger's research bolsters the Tannenbaum/Elkins thesis through a case study of the Spanish system in New Orleans, most importantly, by employing a combination of cultural-legal traditions and economic-material evidence. She demonstrates how Louisiana slaves gained their freedom, acquired wealth and property, developed commercial, social and political contacts with white sand free blacks. Hanger argues that King Carlos III's policy of allowing slaves to purchase their freedom supported by the Catholic Church was a critical factor.
Source: class handout of unknown origin. do you know? e-mail me.