New Histories of New England Slavery

Bibliographic Data

ID3364352
AuthorsJared Ross Hardesty (corresponding author), Jared Ross Hardesty Jared Ross Hardesty
Year2017
Volume74
Issue3
Pages542
Publication date2017-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueThe William and Mary Quarterly (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0043-5597 • E-ISSN: 1933-7698
PublisherProject MUSE (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.5309/willmaryquar.74.3.0542
OpenAlexW2736506366
LanguageEN
References cited8

New Histories of New England Slavery Jared Ross Hardesty Brethren by Nature: New England Indians, Colonists, and the Origins of American Slavery. By Margaret Ellen Newell. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2015. 328 pages. Cloth, paper, ebook. New England Bound: Slavery and Colonization in Early America. By Wendy Warren. New York: W. W. Norton/Liveright Publishing Corporation, 2016. 363 pages. Cloth, paper, ebook. The study of slavery in New England has undergone something of a renaissance in recent years. Although historians have been studying the subject since the 1860s, works have appeared intermittently and most modern studies still draw heavily upon Lorenzo Johnston Greene's The Negro in Colonial New England.1 Since 2010, however, historians have published a large number of monographs and articles examining slavery and emancipation in the region.2 This new generation of scholarship has broadened the conversation on New England slavery by incorporating transnational perspectives, cultural studies methodology, and Native New Englanders, as well as by drawing on previously undiscovered or underutilized archival materials. Perhaps most importantly, these works demonstrate a willingness to transcend the parochialism and exceptionalism that have often characterized the historiography of the region in general and New England slavery in particular. The books under review are part of this trend, advancing it in interesting ways. Most works on slavery and emancipation in New England tend to focus on African slavery, explore the eighteenth century, or focus primarily on abolition, with an introductory chapter on enslavement. Both Margaret Ellen Newell and Wendy Warren examine the seventeenth century, before there were large numbers of African slaves. There is a relative dearth of source material on slavery in the region during that period compared with the eighteenth century, when enslaved men and women appear more frequently in manuscripts and print culture—mostly because the enslaved [End Page 542] population expanded dramatically after 1700. Moreover, as both authors note, slavery in seventeenth-century New England, much like other parts of the Anglo-Atlantic, was legally ambiguous, ill-defined, and uncertain. Finally, the authors also deal extensively with Indian slavery in the region, which, as Newell's many articles on the subject attest, was the predominant form of nonwhite bound labor in New England before 1700.3 Of the two books, however, Newell's Brethren by Nature is better grounded in the rich archival materials available to scholars of slavery in New England. Newell's book begins with a compelling premise that has wide-ranging implications: the enslavement and capture of local Indians laid the legal and institutional groundwork for upholding the bondage and perpetual, inheritable servitude of people of color, both Native American and African, until after the American Revolution. Her book offers a detailed, granular study of how Indian slavery operated as an institution—in terms of labor arrangements and the nature of sale and purchase—and its intersections with larger political and economic developments. Long-standing arguments in the study of New England slavery, such as the relatively ambiguous nature of slave law, are turned on their heads. In that particular case, historians—including this reviewer—have tended to argue that the lack of slave laws and codes in New England demonstrates a commitment to the household governance of slavery and a relative disinterest in the institution as a whole. Newell demonstrates, however, that although the former was true, legal ambiguity often allowed slaveholders to manipulate the status of captive Indians to perpetuate their servitude and better extract their labor. Although Newell tracks the enslavement of Natives from the Pequot War to after American independence, the bulk of the book focuses on the seventeenth century. Newell weaves the history of Indian slavery into larger narratives of economics and trade, geopolitics, imperial developments, and war. It is obvious that her previous work on the New England economy shapes this book.4 Having such a deep understanding of how the economy functioned allows Newell to offer some interesting insights. For example, she shows that the sale of Indian captives following the Pequot War in 1638 coincided with the freeing of many of the English servants that colonists brought with them. Like bound laborers across the English Atlantic during the

Archaeology · Colonialism · Emancipation · Historiography · New england · Parochialism · Political science · Politics · Publishing · Scholarship · Sociology · Classics · Colonialism, slavery, and trade · History · Law

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