Slavery has often been treated as a marginal aspect of history, confined to courses on southern or African American history. In fact, slavery played a crucial role in the making of the modern world. Slavery provided the labor force for the Slavery played an indispensable role in the settlement and development of the New World.
Slavery dates to prehistoric times and could be found in ancient Babylon, classical Greece and Rome, China, India, and Africa as well as in the New World.
To learn more, read a succinct overview of the history of slavery.
American Slavery As It Is by Theodore Dwight Weld, 1839
http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/documents/documents_p2.cfm?doc=81
Maps:
Slave Trade Maps
http://gropius.lib.virginia.edu/Slavery/FMPro?-
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Images:
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Pictorial
Images of the Transatlantic Slave Trade http://gropius.lib.virginia.edu/SlaveTrade/ An extensive collection of maps, images, and portraits illustrating the Trans-Atlantic slave trade, as it took place from Africa through the middle passage and landing in the New World. |
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Timelines:
Chronology of Antislavery
Timeline of abolition
Fact sheets and lesson plans:
Fact sheets:
Handout on Slavery
Fact Sheets on Slavery
Time Line on SlaveryRecommended lesson plan:
Families in Bondage
http://edsitement.neh.gov/view_lesson_plan.asp?id=280
Fact checks:
Test your knowledge about the history of slavery by taking our Slavery Quiz.
Recommended readings:
Essential books:
- Ira Berlin, Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in America
- Peter Kolchin, American Slavery
Click to access a succinct essay on the best books on the history of slavery.
You may also click to view a longer list of recommended books.
Few historical topics have evoked more heated debate than slavery. Among the central questions that historians have debated are these:
- Why did slavery come to dominate the economies of such societies as ancient Greece and Rome, the southern United States, Brazil, and Britain and France's Caribbean colonies?
- Why did slavery achieve its greatest strength in the United States, a society dedicated to freedom and equality?
- In what ways were slavery and racism connected?
For more than a century, professional historians have engaged in heated debates over slavery. They have argued over whether slavery or racism came first; whether the Constitution was a pro- or anti-slavery document; and whether slavery was the underlying cause of the American Civil War. Click below to learn about two heated historical debates:
For a more complete discussion of the debates over slavery, read our historiographical essay.
A number of leading scholars have written articles on slavery that are available online. Refer to our links to these articles.
Recommended
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Glory
The heroic story of the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Regiment, the first black regiment to fight in the Civil War.
Learn more:
Many influential Hollywood films, from Birth of a Nation and Gone with the Wind to Glory and Amistad, have helped shape the way Americans have thought about slavery.
To learn more about inaccuracies in Hollywood's depictions of slavery.
Recommended
Web site:
Virginia Runaways
http://www.uvawise.edu/history/runaways/
A digital database of runaway and captured slave and servant advertisements from 18th-century Virginia newspapers, this project offers full transcripts and images of all runaway and captured ads for slaves, servants, and deserters placed in Virginia newspapers from 1736 to 1790.
This site was updated on 03-Jul-09.
