Abstract
The number of historical works on slavery has exploded over the last three decades, and no one has yet dared to write a synthetic work encapsulating our current historiographical understandings of the institution. Of course, slavery's peculiarity has always been problematic for historians to pin down, yet the latest generation of historians has added so much richness to the canon that any synthesis might prove unsatisfying. More modestly, in twelve chapters divided over three sections, the editors Jeff Forret and Christine E. Sears delve into the latest in slavery studies in the three scholarly themes (commodification, community, and comparison) that have emerged as conduits for historiographical thought. Each has the benefit, though, of a long historiographical past, emanating from foundational works by Stanley Elkins and Frank Tannenbaum, yet obviously molded in the latest historiographic treatments that refute those authors' original hypotheses and take their cues from the likes of Mark Smith, Ira Berlin, and Peter Kolchin. Kolchin's fingerprints are all over this volume, as most of its contributors are onetime students or mentees of the Bancroft Prize–winning historian and wrote it in his honor.
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