Small-Scale Dynamics of Large-Scale Processes

Abstract

IN HIS PROVOCATIVE ESSAY, David Brion Davis, to whom all of us who work on history of slavery owe so much, has offered a glimpse of several pedagogical and conceptual strategies that can help overcome tendency toward compartmentalization of study of slavery. He notes two axes along which slavery studies can expand: first, rich and by now familiar field of comparative studies; and, second, what he sees as less developed area of broadly systemic approaches. Some of latter might be characterized by term Atlantic Studies. Though rarely invoked as a recognized subfield for purposes of job definition, Atlantic Studies has indeed emerged as an organizing principle under which multiple phenomena within and outside metropoles and colonies can be linked, often with slavery at core.1 Davis's argument for centrality of slavery, however, goes beyond importance of slave trade and slave labor in construction of Atlantic system, and invokes powerful apparent contradiction between New World as a place of opportunity and new beginnings, on one hand, and a place of retrograde and exploitative labor relations embodied in slavery, on other. It is from this vantage point that he asserts that the Big Picture is indispensable. Davis sketches a fascinating undergraduate course focused on making and then overthrow of New World slavery, encompassing themes as varied as biblical constructions of bondage and life histories of Italian bankers who