The American Crucible

A compelling history of slavery by its foremost historian. The slave systems of the Americas were to become as large as any in human history, and the huge profits they engendered stimulated capitalist growth in Europe and fostered war and colonial revolt. “The Rise and Fall of Slavery in the Americas” explores both why Europe’s conquest and colonization of the Americas were accompanied by the construction of a variety of racially defined slave systems, and why they were eventually suppressed in a century of abolitionism from 1788-1887. US and British governments have long basked in the view that they played a special role in the eventual victories of anti-slavery. Blackburn insists that we should see the advance of anti-slavery as rooted in much wider social struggles and movements propelled by free people of color, political and religious radicals and slave rebels. He shows how these movements were most effective when they challenged both racism and private property, and that their greatest triumphs coincided with deep-going crisis of the entire social order.