New Studies in the History of American Slavery (review)

Slavery studies in American history have continued to develop at such an extraordinary pace that simply keeping up to date with the current historiography has become a full-time job in itself. Fortunately, Edward E. Baptist and Stephanie M. H. Camp’s edited collection, New Studies in the History of American Slavery, has succeeded admirably in a task that has long been needed. Modestly acknowledging that the articles presented in their volume “hardly provide the first new thoughts about the history of slavery in the Americas” (1), the anthology brings together ten extremely well-written articles by some of the most dynamic and important historians of slavery working today. With the exception of four entries, the essays in the volume are concerned primarily with slavery in the late antebellum southern United States.

The collection is introduced with an informative historiographical essay in which the editors trace the progression of slavery studies throughout the last century. Baptist and Camp contend that in a bid to explore the paradoxical qualities in the lives of enslaved people, many scholars of slavery now “dissolve dichotomous choices.” The complex nature of slavery, the editors argue, cannot be understood “through an either/or framework” (3). Moreover, they proclaim that three major developments have significantly shaped much new work in slavery studies: the influence of gender history, the issue of race, and cultural history. These “intellectual trends” provide the framework for the book, with the ten contributing essays divided thematically under each of the three headings (12).

The first section, “Gender and Slavery,” contains three excellent essays by Jennifer L. Morgan, Sharla M. Fett, and Camp. Morgan’s and Camp’s essays are chapters from their respective books, Laboring Women: Reproduction and Gender in New World Slavery (Philadelphia, 2004) and Closer to Freedom: Enslaved Women and Everyday Resistance in the Plantation South (Chapel Hill, NC, 2004), while Fett’s essay develops the arguments made in her monograph, Working Cures: Healing, Health, and Power on Southern Slave Plantations (Chapel Hill, NC, 2002). Morgan’s essay is a fascinating exploration of how the development of racialist discourse was profoundly influenced by gendered notions of difference created by European travelers to Africa and English settlers in America. Morgan finds gender located at the heart of the European encounter with Africa. As male travelers gazed upon the bodies of African women, they constructed notions of civility, morality, and race, which ultimately justified the turn to enslaved African labor in the New World.

Of particular interest is Camp’s essay, “The Pleasures of Resistance: Enslaved Women and Body Politics in the Plantation South, 1830– 1861.” First published in the Journal of Southern History (August 2002), this essay is a ground-breaking study of gender and resistance. Influenced by James C. Scott’s theory of everyday forms of resistance, Camp draws attention to the secret parties held by enslaved people at night, away from the eyes of the slaveholder, whereby participants would dance, drink, court, and play music. For Camp, these parties did not function as “safety valves” working to the advantage to the owner. Instead, the bodily pleasures that accompanied these parties were profound sites of “resistance, enjoyment, and potentially transcendence” from the dehumanizing effects of slavery (90). Camp’s work demonstrates the merits of dissolving dichotomies, arguing that “the body, so deeply personal, is also a political arena” (91). Hence, enslaved women, whose bodies were unique sites of domination under slavery, were able to “reclaim” (93) their bodies from planter control and view, and use them as sites of resistance. Indeed, the very act of slipping out at night to attend parties compromised plantation productivity in that enslaved people failed to rest sufficiently for the next day’s chores, much to the outrage of the slaveholder.

The second section of the anthology includes essays focusing on the issues of race, identity, and community, with contributions from Herman L. Bennett, Barbara...