The Politics of the Second Slavery ed. by Dale W. Tomich (review)

Dale Tomich defined the concept of "second slavery" in 1988 to consider the creation of new zones of slavery in the Americas: those related to coffee production in Brazil, sugar in Cuba, and cotton in the United States. For Tomich, these were "part of the material and economic expansion of the capitalist world-economy" (ix). Since then, a number of studies have reconsidered the historical processes that led to the expansion of slavery and the consolidation of nation-states in the Atlantic World in the first half of the nineteenth century. The term has become so familiar that it is now used to designate this time period.

In his introduction, Tomich points out that while the term has been used primarily to discuss social and material conditions, it is not limited to the economic history of slavery. Rather, it applies equally to the political, ideological, and cultural aspects of the expansion of slavery throughout the continent. In this volume, Tomich and some of the most prominent scholars of Atlantic slavery address the political aspects, successfully explaining the role of politics and diplomacy in establishing the nineteenth-century system that resulted in the Second Slavery.

Of course, as in many edited books, some chapters connect more directly to the main topic than others. Even so, taken as whole, the chapters provide a useful framework for the analysis of two crucial aspects of Second Slavery politics: the abolition of the international Atlantic slave trade and the international impact of the US Civil War (1861-65), both correctly taken as key elements in understanding the fight for political hegemony in the Atlantic World and the process of the abolition of slavery in the Americas. Yet, it is precisely in the abolition of slavery that the concept of Second Slavery finds its explanatory limits. After all, the century that began with an increase in slavery ended with its abolishment, and, ultimately, this change did not pose a threat to commodity production in these regions.

One of the book's key claims, according to Tomich, is that all politics are grounded in transnational structures (x). If that is the case, we need to ask how these transnational structures map to specific national politics of abolishing slavery. Luis Miguel García Mora and Ricardo Salles, writing about Cuba and Brazil respectively, address this issue directly. In his detailed explanation of the ambiguous relationship between the Autonomist Party and abolitionism in Cuba, García Mora enumerates a number of factors to explain the difficulties of abolishing slavery and patronage in Cuba, including different interests among the Autonomists, pressure by the abolitionists, and the enslaved population's awareness of rights (136). Making a case for the master class's interest in abolishing slavery in Brazil, Salles claims that all the reforms of the conservative party regarding slavery came about because of both international and popular influences (161).

The concept of Second Slavery is useful for describing and explaining the making of slavery in the nineteenth-century Americas, but it is insufficient to explain its later destruction. If we consider only the interests of the planters in the United States, Cuba, and Brazi and take into account the hegemonic role they played in those societies, it seems clear that slavery would never have been abolished. The international pressure does not explain everything, either: even García Mora and Salles highlight that transnational structures are not enough to explain the abolition of slavery everywhere. The local actions of slaves and abolitionists must be considered fundamental to the understanding of the forces that led to the end of slavery in each country.

In an earlier work, Through the Prism of Slavery, Tomich argued that the causes of the emancipation "remain diverse and conjunctural" (57). The abolition of slavery is indeed a complex phenomenon, and explaining its process on a large scale remains a challenge to historians. This edited volume makes...