Reckoning

Robin Blackburn is the critically acclaimed author of The Making of New World Slavery, The Overthrow of Colonial Slavery and The American Crucible. He is Emeritus Professor at the University of Essex and was a Distinguished Visiting Professor at the New School in New York. He lives in London

Tremendously impressive, the result of a lifetime of learning. Historical writing at its best

• Introduction: Why the ‘Second Slavery’?Patterns of the ‘First Slavery’Slavery’s Survivors: The American South, Brazil, CubaDistinctiveness of the Second Slavery Industry, Finance and SlaveryFortifications of the Second SlaveryPart One: Westwards Expansion I Pioneers of the Second SlaveryContested Origins of the United States The US Constitution and SlaveryAn Abolition Moment?The Northwest Ordinance and Militia Act From the Haitian Revolution to the Louisiana PurchaseBirth of the White Man’s Republic Indian Removal and the German Coast RevoltThe Price of CompromiseThe Missouri Controversy A Choice for Slavery II The Making of the Hispano-Cuban EliteA Cuban Miracle?Cuba as a ‘Society with Slaves’The British in Havana The Hispano-Cuban Reconquest of FloridaThe Great Slave Revolt in St DomingueThe Plantation Surge Cuba as a Slave SocietyThe Colonial Pact A Model Colony?III Brazil: Independence, Monarchy, Slavery and CitizenshipPatterns of Race and SlaveryMercantilism’s End and a New Slave Trade BoomStirrings of Independence and Anti-slavery The Last Days of Colonial BrazilAdherence to the Emperor Liberty, Pacification and Terror in Bahia Pedro’s Setbacks and Abdication The Regency and the Slave TradeBrazil and Backwardness Romanticism and ‘Natural History’Power Was EverythingBrazil Ends the Slave TradeIV Life and Toil on the Slave PlantationRacial Capitalism and the Chattel PrincipleA Multitude of Tasks‘Vigilance Without Punishment is an Illusion’The Productivity of Gang LabourThe Slaveholder as Colonist and Potentate Natural Economy and the Reproduction of the Slave PopulationV Slaveholder Capitalism, Credit and Westwards ExpansionSlaveholders and Modernity Dimensions of the Plantation BoomSlavery Away from the PlantationsCredit is King?Mechanization and its LimitsThe Special Case of Sugar ProcessingAccounting for SlaveryPlanters Ride the Business CycleSlave Dealers Become Sugar LordsHow Cotton Paid for EmpirePart Two: Why the Slaveowners Lost VI. War, Peace and Slavery, 1815-60Mechanics of the Congress SystemConservative Reaction and Bourgeois AdvanceThe Vienna Congress and the Slave TradeLatin America, Britain and the Monroe Doctrine A Congress of the Americas?The Fate of CubaBrazil, Britain and the Upshot of 1850 The Diplomacy of Bullies Filibustering in Texas and CubaMutations of the PeaceVII. Anti-Slavery and the Origins of the Civil WarAnti-Slavery and the Northern MilieuThe Appeal and the Liberator The American Anti-Slavery Society‘A Shock as of an Earthquake’: Pro-Slavery OverreachesSplits over Women’s Rights The Whig and Liberty parties The Role of Frederick DouglassPolitical Abolitionism, Free Soil and the Wilmot Proviso Militant Anti-slaveryThe Dynamics of the Sectional ConflictThe Fugitive Slave Law and Underground Railroad Bleeding Kansas The Rise of the Republican PartyThe Slave Power and the Dred Scott Decision John Brown’s BodyThe Last Cords of Union BreakThe Meaning of Secession: A Slaveholders’ RevoltVIII. Emancipation and Reconstruction in North AmericaWar for the UnionNovelty of the US Civil WarLincoln Discovers that Patriotism Is Not EnoughThe Emancipation Proclamation Emancipation from Above and BelowThe Defeat of the ConfederacyPresidential Reconstruction and the Radical ChallengeThe Radical Programme: Confiscation and Black SuffrageThe Rise and Fall of Radical Reconstruction in the SouthThe North and Radical ReconstructionBlacks and Whites in the New South A Second Revolution?IX. The Ending of Slavery in CubaCuba and Isabelline Spain   Puerto Rican Comparisons Tepid Abolitionism of the Cuban Middle ClassSpain’s Politics of AttractionCrisis of the Isabelline RegimeAbolitionism and the Priorities of Imperialist DiplomacyThe Moret Law The ‘Lottery of Princes’  The Republic of DukesBourbon Restoration and the Triumph of the RentierThe Pact of ZanjónSlavery Ends at LastThe United States Seizes Control X. Brazil: The Last EmancipationSlavery’s Place in the Imperial Order Repercussions of the Atlantic Slave Trade Ban The War with Paraguay Crabwise Advance of Emancipationism The Rio Branco Law of 1871The Political Economy of FreedomChurch and StateThe Social Profile of Brazilian AbolitionismRepublicanism and PositivismThe Abolitionist Offensive, 1880-4The Final Assault on Slavery   Ordered Freedom‘A Tattered and Ridiculous Liberty’Epilogue: Legacies of Slavery and AbolitionAcknowledgements