The Origins of American Slavery : Freedom and Bondage in the English Colonies (Critical Issue)

Rating:
Summary: Incomplete treatise
Review: Ms. Woods examination of the attitudes that led to enslavement of Africans and Native Americans is well done, but I wish she'd brought out some of the similarity in attitudes toward indigenous European culture, the Irish for instance. The same attitude of being "hardly human," and "savage," the callousness with which they were eliminated from their land in the late 1500's and the slavery that they experienced (200 Irish women were sent to Barbados as wives for black slaves, for instance) points to a bias which was cultural as well as racial. Well worth reading, however.

Rating:
Summary: Good book, but could be better
Review: Ms. Woods examination of the attitudes that led to enslavement of Africans and Native Americans is well done, but I wish she'd brought out some of the similarity in attitudes toward indigenous European culture, the Irish for instance. The same attitude of being "hardly human," and "savage," the callousness with which they were eliminated from their land in the late 1500's and the slavery that they experienced (200 Irish women were sent to Barbados as wives for black slaves, for instance) points to a bias which was cultural as well as racial. Well worth reading, however.

Rating:
Summary: Incomplete treatise
Review: The author does an excellent job of analyzing slavery, ex post facto. There is little information about the roots of slavery, specifically the institutionalization of slavery in Africa, well before Europeans began to use Africans as forced labor. Entire African nations were built on slavery. The American view of slavery is that Europeans went into the bush, captured slaves, and brought them back. Historical documents reflect that the slaves were bought from enormously wealthy and powerful black slave dealers along the Ivory Coast. Scholarly works should include the entire background of slavery if we are to understand this painful part of America's past as well as understand why it continues in parts of Africa to this day. A side note- the word "slave" has Slavic origins. Slaves were of European extract for centuries.