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Dark Work: The Business of Slavery in Rhode Island (Early American Places Book 12) Kindle Edition
A historical study of Rhode Island’s role in the slave economy and of the experiences of enslaved and free black Rhode Islanders.
Historians have written about the slave economy and its vital role in the early American economy, but this book tells the story of one state in particular whose role was outsized: Rhode Island. Like their northern neighbors, Rhode Islanders bought and sold supplies and slaves that sustained plantation throughout the Americas; however, nowhere else was this business as important as it was to Rhode Island.
In Dark Work, Christy Clark-Pujara draws on archival documents and the few first-hand accounts left by enslaved and free black Rhode Islanders to reconstruct their lived experiences. The business of slavery encouraged slaveholding, slowed emancipation, and led to circumscribed black freedom. Enslaved and free black people pushed back against their bondage and the restrictions placed on their freedom. It is convenient, especially for northerners, to think of slavery as a southern institution. The erasure or marginalization of the northern black experience and the centrality of the business of slavery to the northern economy allows for a dangerous fiction—that the North has no history of racism to overcome. But we cannot afford such a delusion if we are to truly reconcile with our past
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherNYU Press
- Publication dateAugust 30, 2016
- File size2752 KB
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Editorial Reviews
Review
"Clark-Pujara’s work (the first study to take enslaved people, and slavery and its legacy in Rhode Island, as its primary focus) demonstrates just how central slavery was to the Rhode Island economy, both before Rhode Island passed its gradual emancipation law in 1784, and for many decades after... Dark Work is an engaging, sophisticated monograph that does vital work in writing enslaved and free African American Rhode Islanders back, both into the history of “big” national and local events of the American Revolution, the Dorr Rebellion, and the Civil War, and into “small” histories of daily life in Rhode Island (documenting African Americans’ ongoing efforts to control their lives, in a system fundamentally opposed to them doing so). An elegant, insightful work of scholarship." -- Journal of American Ethnic History
"It is well-known that Rhode Island's mercantile and manufacturing economies served the larger Atlantic plantation complex, but Clark-Pujara asks an important new question: how did the black freedom struggle unfold in a place materially invested and implicated in the expansion of human bondage across in the Americas? Clark-Pujara reconstructs the lives and livelihoods of black Rhode Islanders, for whom the violence of enslavement, the prospects of emancipation, and the limits of freedom unfolded in accordance with the demands for food in the Caribbean, for slaves in the Carolinas, and for clothing in Louisiana." -- Seth Rockman,Brown University
"Dark Workis an excellent study on the importance of slavery in the economy of Rhode Island." ― H-Net Reviews
"Overall, Christy Clark-PujarasDark Work: The Business of Slavery in Rhode Islandis thought-provoking." ― The New England Quarterly
"[This] author's sharply focused monograph exploring the impact of slavery on Rhode Island's black population is a valuable addition to the historiography that now assumes the centrality of slavery in the North and the compatibility therein of capitalism and slavery." ― Historian
"Dark Work is a sweeping overview of the African American experience in Rhode Island from the colonial period through the Civil War... a valuable resource." -- Agricultural History
"This superb work should be read by anyone interested in early American race relations or New England history." ― Choice
About the Author
Product details
- ASIN : B0171WAHFM
- Publisher : NYU Press; Reprint edition (August 30, 2016)
- Publication date : August 30, 2016
- Language : English
- File size : 2752 KB
- Text-to-Speech : Enabled
- Screen Reader : Supported
- Enhanced typesetting : Enabled
- X-Ray : Not Enabled
- Word Wise : Enabled
- Sticky notes : On Kindle Scribe
- Print length : 226 pages
- Best Sellers Rank: #770,565 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- Customer Reviews:
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