Human Bondage and Abolition

Elizabeth Swanson is Professor of English at Babson College. She has published extensively in the areas of slavery, human rights, and literature, and has worked to help rebuild the lives of survivors of brothel slavery in India, Nepal, and the US. James Brewer Stewart is the James Wallace Professor of History Emeritus at Macalester College Minnesota. He is the founder and director emeritus of Historians Against Slavery, an international network that advocates for contemporary antislavery and antiracism. He co-edits Louisiana State University's book series Abolition, Antislavery and the Atlantic World, and is the author or editor of thirteen scholarly books relating to the historical problem of slavery.

'This insightful book helps to destroy the myth that somehow slavery of the past was fundamentally different to slavery today, and that antislavery was peopled with heroes in the past and bureaucrats today. Expansive yet detailed, rich with discovery, this is slavery scholarship at its best.' Kevin Bales, author of Blood and Earth: Modern Slavery, Ecocide, and the Secret to Saving the World

• List of figures; List of contributors; Preface: solidarity of the ages David Blight; Acknowledgments; Introduction: getting beyond chattel slavery James Brewer Stewart and Elizabeth Swanson; Part I. Understanding and Defining Slavery, Then and Now: 1. Contemporary slavery in historical perspective David Richardson; 2. Slavery as civic death: making sense of modern slavery in historical context James Sidbury; 3. From statute to amendment and back again: the evolution of American slavery and antislavery law Allison Mileo Gorsuch; Part II. Forms of Slavery, Past and Present: 4. Kidnappers and subcontractors: historical perspectives on human trafficking John Donoghue; 5. Maritime bondage: comparing past and present Kerry Ward; 6. 'All boys are bound to someone': reimagining freedom in the history of child slavery Anna Mae Duane; 7. From white slavery to anti-prostitution, the long view: law, policy and sex trafficking Jessica R. Pliley; Part III. The Lessons and Solutions of History for Today: 8. All the ships that never sailed: lessons for the modern antislavery movement from the British naval campaigns against the Atlantic slave trade Dave Blair; 9. Defending slavery, denying slavery: rhetorical strategies of the contemporary sex worker rights movement in historical context Elizabeth Swanson and James Brewer Stewart; 10. The power of the past in the present: the capital of the confederacy as an antislavery city Monti Narayan Datta and James Brewer Stewart; An annotated bibliography for further research; Index.