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Article: Generations of Captivity: a History of African-American Slaves.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
- Article from:
- The Antioch Review
- Article date:
- January 1, 2004
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2004 Antioch Review, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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by Ira Berlin. Harvard University Press, 400 pp., $29.95. Berlin's new book, written with the advantage of many new monographs and articles, updates and extends his earlier study Many Thousands Gone and offers a fundamental new interpretation based on a complex portrait of slavery in America. Berlin's approach shows changes in the slave's relationship to master, by region, by generation, approaching slavery as more than a division of labor history, connecting work in field and workshop to "quarter, household, and church." The constant here is negotiation and renegotiation. "By definition, relations between masters and slaves were profoundly asymmetrical, with slave owners ...