Description: Slavery and coerced labor have been among the most ubiquitous of human institutions both in time - from ancient times to the present - and in place, having existed in virtually all geographic areas and societies. This volume covers the period from the independence of Haiti to modern perceptions of slavery by assembling twenty-eight original essays, each written by scholars acknowledged as leaders in their respective fields. Issues discussed include the sources of slaves, the slave trade, the social and economic functioning of slave societies, the responses of slaves to enslavement, efforts to abolish slavery continuing to the present day, the flow of contract labor and other forms of labor control in the aftermath of abolition, and the various forms of coerced labor that emerged in the twentieth century under totalitarian regimes and colonialism.
Brief description: Seymour Drescher is Distinguished University Professor Emeritus of History and Sociology at the University of Pittsburgh. His numerous publications include From Slavery to Freedom: Comparative Studies in the Rise and Fall of Atlantic Slavery (1999), The Mighty Experiment: Free Labor vs Slavery in British Emancipation (2002), and Abolition: A History of Slavery and Antislavery (Cambridge, 2009).
Review Quotes: 'This excellent collection treats slavery as the truly global phenomenon that it was, and still is, and it looks at slavery within a broad range of forms of labor coercion. The editors have pulled together a team of outstanding authors, most of whom are established authorities on the subjects they discuss.' Martin Klein, University of Toronto