The Big Picture
"A Comment on David Brion Davis's "Looking at Slavery from Broader Perspectives
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 11739230 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Peter Kolchin (corresponding author) |
| Year | 2000 |
| Volume | 105 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 467-467 |
| Publication date | 2000-04-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | The American Historical Review (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0002-8762 • E-ISSN: 1937-5239 |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.2307/1571461 |
| OpenAlex | W2006150704 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 3 |
LET ME BEGIN BY SAYING that I applaud David Brion Davis's commitment to getting away from a parochial view of American slavery by looking at what he terms Big Picture. I am enthusiastic about his evolving course on the rise, development, and fall of the Atlantic slave systems; indeed, I wish that I could take this course. In his essay, he has, with characteristic clarity, shown us how to look at slavery from a and at the same time has skillfully synthesized much of the recent historiography on slavery in the modern world. I would like to raise two interrelated questions about the that Davis has outlined for us. First, I wonder about the precise relationship between what he proposes and history. Davis suggests that there are two distinct ways of looking at slavery from perspectives: one of these is the approach and the other is his global or multinational view of the origins, development, and abolition of racial slavery in the New World. In fact, of course, there is considerable overlap between these two approaches, and in his broader perspective Davis embraces a good deal of what is usually subsumed under the rubric of comparative history.' I would like to see him address more explicitly the relationship between his multinational and comparison, and the extent to which he sees the former as incorporating the latter. Comparative history can serve a number of different functions, but in engaging in historical comparison, scholars usually aim to do at least one of three things: create an awareness of how a particular case fits into a pattern, thereby reducing historical parochialism; test hypotheses and form historical generalizations; or identify and explain significant differences.2 Davis's multinational ap
Aesthetics · Art · CLARITY · Epistemology · Historiography · Perspective (graphical · Political science · Sociology · Visual arts · Wish · Wonder · Anthropology · Colonialism, slavery, and trade · History · Law · Philosophy
| Unique citing works | 3 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0.25 |
| Citation span | 2014 - 2024 (11) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 3 |