The Reckoning: From the Second Slavery to Abolition, 1776-1888

by Blackburn, Robin

Format

Hardcover $19.99
Condition Bargain Brand-new publisher overstock that may have a remainder mark and minor wear from handling. Bargain
$19.99

List price: $59.95 List Price This is the manufacturer's recommended retail price. Please note older versions of books may not reflect the most current list price due to price adjustments made on newer printings. We strive to keep the website's list price updated to match the current MSRP, based on information from publishers.

About

"Tremendously impressive, the result of a lifetime of learning. Historical writing at its best."
—Marcus Rediker, author of The Slave Ship

A history of 19th century slavery in the US, Brazil and Cuba from a critically acclaimed historian of slavery in the Americas


The Reckoning offers the first rounded account of the rise and fall of the Second Slavery—largescale plantation slavery in nineteenth-century Brazil, Cuba and the US South. Robin Blackburn shows how a fusion of industrial capitalism and transatlantic war and revolution turbo-charged racial oppression and the westwards expansion of the United States.

Blackburn identifies the new territories, new victims and new battle cries of the Second Slavery. He emphasises the role of financial credit in the spread of plantation agriculture, traces the connections between slavery and the US Civil War, and asks why Brazil threw off Portuguese rule whereas Cuba became one of imperial Spain’s final outposts.

The Second Slavery faced a fearful reckoning in the 1860s and after when the supposedly invincible Slave Power was defied by extraordinary cross-class, international and interracial alliances. Blackburn narrates the abolitionists’ difficult victory over the enslavers, while documenting the racial backlash which brought on Jim Crow and cheated the freedmen and freedwomen of the fruits of their struggle.
Additional Info