Michael Guasco. Slaves and Englishmen

In a welcome addition to the literature on American slavery, Michael Guasco takes us away from the iconic moment when “‘20. and odd Negroes’” (p. 1) were first brought to Virginia in 1619 and takes us on a journey across the English world in the early years of Anglo-American colonization (roughly the 1490s through the 1660s), demonstrating that English people knew about and encountered slavery in a variety of forms—from Japan to the Americas—long before they came to Virginia. It was a complicated relationship in a time and place where Englishmen were vulnerable to enslavement themselves: at the hands of the Turks, the Spanish, or even other Englishmen. By the end of the book, there is no longer a question of why the English turned to slavery to develop their American colonies. In a world of omnipresent slavery, the real question should be, “how could they not do so?” In the early modern world, the rejection of slavery was a rare exception.

Ancient history · Archaeology · Atlantic World · Colonialism · Ethnology · Genealogy · Variety (cybernetics) · Classics · Colonialism, slavery, and trade · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis · History · Vietnamese History and Culture Studies