200 pages / 5.50 x 8.50 inches / no illustrations
History / United States - Southern History
In one of his most important books, the renowned historian Eugene D. Genovese examines slave revolts in the United States, the Caribbean, and Brazil, placing them in the context of modern world history. By studying the conditions that favored these revolts and the history of slave guerrilla warfare throughout the Western Hemisphere, he connects the ideology of the revolts to the ideology of the great revolutionary movements of the late eighteenth century.
Genovese finds that the slave rebellion in Saint-Domingue, led by Toussaint L’Ouverture, constituted a turning point in the history of the slave revolts and, indeed, in the history of the human spirit. By claiming for his enslaved brothers and sisters the same right to human dignity that the French bourgeoisie claimed for itself during the French Revolution, Toussaint began the process by which slave uprisings changed from secessionist rebellions to revolutionary demands for liberty, equality, and justice.
Eugene Genovese , professor of history at the University of Rochester, is editor of Marxist Perspectives, a fellow of the Academy of Arts & Science, and a past president of the Organization of American Historians. His books include Roll, Jordon, Roll (for which he received a Bancroft Prize in 1975), The Political Economy of Slavery, The World the Slaveholders Made, and In Red & Black. He is also the editor of the two volumes by Ulrich Bonnell Phillips published by Louisiana State University Press, American Negro Slavery and The Slave Economy of the Old South.
“This bold and brilliant essay upholds Eugene D. Genovese’s reputation as the premier generalist in the slavery field and as a perennial gadfly.”—American Historical Review
“[Genovese] has taken what was a dreary and fruitless debate and cast it in new and provocative terms . . . he brings a breath of fresh air into a musty old room.”—New Republic
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