Robin Blackburn, The Making of New World Slavery: From the Baroque to the Modern, 1492-1800 (London: Verso, 1997).

SYNOPSIS:

Blackburn describes the evolution of the Atlantic system of slavery in an international context, emphasizing the crucial role slavery played in the emergence of modern Europe.

EXCERPT:

"The development of slavery in the Americas "was associated with several of those processes which have been held to define modernity: the growth of instrumental rationality, the rise of national sentiment and the nation-state, racialized perceptions of identity, the spread of market relations and wage labour, the development of administrative bureaucracies and modern tax systems, the growing sophistication of commerce and communication, the birth of consumer societies, the publication of newspapers and the beginnings of press advertising, 'action at a distance' and an individualist sensibility." (4)

RELATIONSHIP:

The patterns Blackburn sees as intrinsic to the foundational years of Atlantic slavery we see still present centuries later on the eve of the American Civil War. Indeed, many of those structures were stronger in 1860 than they had ever been before.