History 450: New World Slavery
Instructor: Birte Pfleger
Office: KHC 4033
Office hours: T, TH: 11:30-1:30
Phone: (323) 343-2044 (please do not leave messages)
History Department: (323) 343-2020
http://www.calstatela.edu/academic/history/course.htm
E-mail: bpflege@calstatela.edu
Web address: http://www.calstatela.edu/faculty/bpflege/
Learning, like democracy, is participatory
The enslavement of millions of people of African descent, their forced migration to the New World
and subsequent brutal exploitation is one of the most horrific legacies of European colonization of the
Americas. This course explores the origins of slavery, the different beginnings, and subsequent
developments of slavery as well as strategies of resistance to and eventual abolition of slavery in the
Americas. This comparative approach to slavery will rely on Robin Blackburn’s work as a guiding
text, supplemented by scholarly articles.
Required Texts:
Robin Blackburn, The Making of New World Slavery From the Baroque to the Modern, 1492-1800
(New York: Verso, 1997)
Course Reader: http://www.aacolor.com
It is also available at AA Color Copy, 4400 E. 7th Street, Long Beach 90804 (Ximeno cross street)
(562) 987-1947
GRADE
Class participation
Discussion leadership
Presentation
Reading Journal
Final paper
15%
15%
10%
30%
30%
* In addition to the other course requirements graduate students need to write one book review (2
pages, 1 inch margins, Times font, double spaced) on one of the books listed below. The reviews are
due by March 1.
Class participation is absolutely vital for this course. To make meaningful contributions you must
come to class prepared, i.e. you must have completed the assigned readings and be able to discuss
them.
Discussion leadership: Each student will have the opportunity to lead class discussions on assigned
readings at least once during the quarter (depending on enrollment). Your job for the day will be to
introduce the readings to us and to lead the group through the important issues of the readings. Think
of this as a team teaching exercise. You should begin with a brief introduction to the author/s (find out
what else he/she has written, where the author teaches etc. The Internet is a great place to search for
that information). After that you will launch the group into a discussion of the issues: What does the
author argue? What evidence does the author use? How does she/he make the argument? Do you see
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problems with the article/chapter? How does the article relate to an assigned primary source? How
does the book relate to other readings or discussions? What questions are not addressed? Visual aids
are always useful either in the form of a one-page outline, a list of questions, pictures or overhead
transparencies. It is NOT your job to lecture or to offer all the answers to the class. Instead your job is
to facilitate discussion. You MUST email your discussion questions to the instructor AT LEAST 48
hours before you are scheduled for the discussion leadership.
Reading Journal
Write a 50-word summary of the main argument made by the author for each scholarly article (not
book chapters) assigned. Each summary MUST be typed and on a separate sheet. Please staple your
summaries and bring them to every class meeting. I will collect the reading journals twice during the
quarter. Please see your course reader for further instructions.
Presentation: One important way to resist slavery was to run away. Based on your search of an online
collection of run-away slave advertisements you will present either one advertisement that you deem to
be exceptional (and you will tell us why) or you may compare and contrast two advertisements that
illustrate important differences. Either approach to the presentation has to be based on thorough
research and analysis as well as your thorough understanding of the assigned readings on the subject.
The ONLY online collection you may use for this assignment is: The Geography of Slavery in
Virginia: http://www.vcdh.virginia.edu/gos/index.html
Please provide either handouts of the advertisements you chose or one copy (large print) for an
overhead transparency. Do not let the document speak for itself. Be specific and brief (5 minutes)
Final Paper: 5-7 pages (1 inch margins, Times font, double-spaced) using as many course readings,
discussion and lecture notes as relevant to answer one of the essay questions distributed in class. Be
sure to cite your sources in footnotes. You MUST email the instructor the introductory paragraph
of your final paper by March 5 at noon. The final draft of the paper is DUE IN MY OFFICE on
March 13 by 6 pm.
Schedule
January 2: Introductions
Guest lecturer: Professor Stan Burstein: Slavery in the Ancient World
January 9: Beginnings
Robin Blackburn, The Making of New World Slavery, Introduction, Part I, chapters 1, 2, 3
January 16: Africa and the Slave Trade
J. E. Inikori, “The Import of Firearms into West Africa, 1750-1807: A Quantitative Analysis,” The
Journal of African History Vol. 18, No. 3, (1977), 339-368.
John Thornton, “Warfare and Slavery,” The Atlantic Slave Trade, 55-63.
January 23: Sugar & Slavery
Robin Blackburn, The Making of New World Slavery, chapters 4, 5, 6, 7, 8
January 30: Slavery & Race
James H. Sweet, ‘The Iberian Roots of American Racist Thought,” WMQ Vol. 54, No. 1, (Jan. 1997),
143-166
Edmund S. Morgan, “Slavery and Freedom: The American Paradox,” JAH, Vol. 59, No. 1 (June 1972),
5-29.
David Geggus, “The French Slave Trade: An Overview,” WMQ, Vol. 58, No. 1 (2001).
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February 6: Slavery in Spanish America
“The African Experience in Early Spanish America,” The Americas, Vol. 57 No. 2 (Oct. 2000) 167282 (5 articles)
February 13: Plantations
Robin Blackburn, The Making of New World Slavery, Part Two (chapters 9-12, Epilogue)
Ira Berlin, “Time, Space and the Evolution of Afro-American Society on British Mainland North
America,” AHR, Vol. 85, No. 1, (Feb. 1980), 44-78.
February 20: Resistance
David Waldstreicher, “Reading the Runaways: Self-Fashioning, Print Culture, and Confidence in
Slavery in the Eighteenth-Century Mid-Atlantic,” WMQ, Vol. 56, No. 2, (1999), 243-272.
Cassandra Pybus, “Jefferson’s Faulty Math: The Question of Slave Defection in the American
Revolution,” WMQ, Vol. 62, No. 2, (2005), 243-264.
February 27: Run-Away advertisements
Individual student presentations
http://www.vcdh.virginia.edu/gos/index.html
March 6: The End of the Slave Trade; Slavery, History & Memory
Herbert Klein, “The End of the Slave Trade,” The Atlantic Slave Trade (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1999), 183-206.
Marixa Lasso, “Race War and Nation in Caribbean Gran Colombia, Cartagena, 1810-1832,” AHR Vol.
111, No. 2, (2006).
Ira Berlin, “American Slavery in History and Memory and the Search for Social Justice,” JAH, Vol.
90, No. 4.
March 13: Final Paper due
Book List for graduate students:
Ira Berlin, Many Thousands Gone; The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America (Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press, 1998)
Kathleen Brown, Good Wives, Nasty Wenches & Anxious Patriarchs; Gender, Race, and Power in
Colonial Virginia (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1996)
Emilia Viotti da Costa, Crowns of Glory, Tears of Blood; The Demerara Slave Rebellion of 1823
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994)
Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, Within the Plantation Household; Black and White Women of the Old South
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1988)
Eugene Genovese, Roll, Jordan Roll; The World the Slaves Made (New York: Random House, 1972)
Walter Johnson, Soul by Soul; Life Inside the Antebellum Slave Market (Cambridge, MA: Cambridge
University Press, 1999)
Edmund Morgan, American Slavery, American Freedom: The Ordeal of Colonial Virginia (New York:
WW Norton & Co., 1975)
Stanley Stein, Vassouras: A Brazilian Coffee County, 1850-1900; The Role of Planter and Slave in a
Plantation Society (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1985)
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