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

The American Constitution chose slavery...and the nation justified the choice by formulating an ideology that made blacks into something less than human beings. The result, as historian Ira Berlin argues in a new book on slavery, Many Thousands Gone, is that African slavery became "no longer just one of many forms of subordination--a common enough circumstance in a world ruled by hierarchies--but the foundation on which the social order rested."--Ellis Cose "Newsweek "

Ira Berlin's magisterial [book] is a story of slavery in evolutionary perspective...As a comprehensive study of early North American slavery the work is unexcelled and will be a boon to students and scholars alike.--Daniel C. Littlefield "Slavery and Abolition "

Berlin's study is the best account we have of the beginnings of servitude in America. It is also a reminder of slavery's adaptability. The notion that it was necessarily tied to the production of export staples is false.--Howard Temperley "Times Literary Supplement "

Ira Berlin provides a sweeping survey of slavery and black life in North America...from the early 17th into the early 19th centuries. The result is the best general history we now have of the "peculiar institution" during its first 200 years. Many Thousands Gone is a remarkable book, one that beautifully integrates two centuries of history over a wide geographical area. It is a benchmark study from which students will learn and with which scholars will grapple for many years to come.--Peter Kolchin "Los Angeles Times "

In Many Thousands Gone, Ira Berlin tells the complex and neglected story of American slavery from 1619 through about 1810. It is a story most Americans do not know...Berlin has written a sweeping history that builds upon the pioneering work of John Hope Franklin, John Blassingame, Eugene Genovese, Herbert Gutman and Edmund Morgan, and shines as both a comprehensive and astute synthesis of current scholarship and as an original contribution to the field.--James L. Swanson "Chicago Tribune "

As Ira Berlin makes abundantly clear, racism was an ideology crucial for creating an intellectual and emotional climate that would allow slavery to exist. It gave an institution, albeit a "peculiar" one, the required veneer of "reason..".Berlin explodes several myths and sets in their place a history that honors the complexity of the American past with an unswerving, unsentimental gaze. One myth that Berlin seizes is that of the Old South, the common belief that slavery was for the most part situated below the Mason-Dixon Line. Slavery became a southern phenomenon only after 200 years of American history. These 200 years are Berlin's subject, as he tracks the black presence throughout early America, emphasizing in vivid detail the diversity of slave existence, urban and rural. He underscores the fact that as America was being constructed by slave labor, slaves were living their own lives and creating their own culture, a syncretic mix of African origins...Berlin's argument, and it is brilliantly posed, is that slavery, with all its resonance, haunts America even as the new century is about to begin.--Michelle Cliff "San Jose Mercury News "

Berlin offers a complex picture of how slaves etched out small freedoms under dire circumstances in early America. Their existence was defined by religion, family structure and African inheritance--not just the fact that they were slaves. Many Thousands Gone is not an apology for slavery, but a testament to the willpower of a people to define their own lives under the most dismal conditions.--Ronald D. Lankford "Roanoke Times "

In Many Thousands Gone, Ira Berlin has produced an intriguing and compelling new interpretation that is one of the most significant books about slavery in several years...Berlin's work is an impressive and masterfully written narrative. He provides a clearer picture of slavery, which has often been clouded by imprecise accounts. As he astutely concludes, slavery's effects still persist as an unwelcome guest in American society.--John A. Hardin "Lexington Herald Leader "

Ira Berlin has helped to shape the recent literature on slavery in the United States...Many Thousands Gone represents Mr. Berlin's most ambitious undertaking to date and a sharp temporal departure from his previous books, for he has backtracked from the 19th century to write a 200-year history of slavery on the North American mainland that begins with the African background to England's settlement of the colonial Chesapeake in the early 17th century...[He] has written a major synthesis that will surely draw praise from the academy.--Robert L. Paquette "Washington Times "

In each society and in each generation slaves adjusted and adapted to their conditions. Blacks never were exclusively the hapless victims of the "white devil" of history or the obsequious Sambos of the "Gone With The Wind" model. Berlin's greatest achievement is finally correcting the misconceptions black and white Americans have about how slavery operated in this nation.--Gregory Kane "Baltimore Sun "