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A review by lkedzie
Humans in Shackles: An Atlantic History of Slavery by Ana Lucia Araujo
5.0
Humans in Shackles is a linear history of the Atlantic slave trade. It starts with Portuguese raids along the West African coast and the situation of slavery in African nations at the time that became embroiled with European adventurers. It walks through the process of people becoming property: the trade ports on the African coast where enslaved people were collated and traded, the middle passage, and the marketplace (physical and metaphorical) in the Americas where the enslaved were sold.
The book then broadens to discuss the conditions of slavery. Some of these, like the family lives of the enslaved are more conceptual. Others, like the look at the enslaved in urban settings, are more comparative between different material or cultural contexts. Discussing the the fits and starts of the abolition of slavery in the Americas and elsewhere, it concludes on different efforts to deal with formerly enslaved people, usually in the form of their moving, or being moved, back to nations or colonial interests in Africa. Notably, this last bit allows for a much more expansive view on the legacy of the Atlantic system slavery and the many cultural effects that took place outside of the Americas.
A particular highlight of the text is in its focus on Brazil in specific and slavery in South America in general. For many reasons, starting with oceanography and including civil vs. common law, there is much that is noteworthy about how slavery was practiced and ended in Brazil. I was wary about the author including this, in how the introduction suggests that it lacks a lot of the type of first-hand accounts that we have for slavery and the slave trade for for North America and the West Indies. Yet by the end of the book I wanted more. It is difficult to talk about comparable with slavery, a long standing human institution that has had many different variations, but being able to compare the different European implementations within the Americas is fruitful to understanding the nuance of the history in general.
Overall it is an excellent read. My primary complaint is that occasionally would lose the thread. The material was good, and I particularly liked the section on religion, but sometimes the author's desire to be comprehensive overrules the otherwise superior structure of the writing. It may be that it is a better textbook than a book, but give me that problem any day. Other than that, there was a stylistic tic in the way that the author discussed references that persistently distracted me, but minor, and more to do with being a person particularly sensitive to how authors talk about their sources.
Something that I particularly liked is what the book considered impossible to represent. The trend is to allow a greater fluidity in composition of narratives about enslaved people's lives in order to make up for the absence of reliable or comprehensive primary material. I usually defend this practice - I mean, Thucydides, right? - but I feel nervous about it in a Red Team sense of seeing how it could be abused.
This book gets in front of that by asserting the inscrutability of the middle passage in specific and of the Atlantic system of slavery in general. We can make artistic representations, learn all there is to know, and bring full bore all the empathy and imagination that we can muster, but the thing itself remains fundamentally unknowable with meager analogy at best. We advance our knowing best by accepting that. That is a striking claim, and one that makes the book stronger for it.
Overall, a great read, and already something that I think about as what as I would suggest as a general reference to the curious.
My thanks to the author, Ana Lucia Araujo, for writing the book, and to the publisher, University of Chicago Press, for making the ARC available to me.
The book then broadens to discuss the conditions of slavery. Some of these, like the family lives of the enslaved are more conceptual. Others, like the look at the enslaved in urban settings, are more comparative between different material or cultural contexts. Discussing the the fits and starts of the abolition of slavery in the Americas and elsewhere, it concludes on different efforts to deal with formerly enslaved people, usually in the form of their moving, or being moved, back to nations or colonial interests in Africa. Notably, this last bit allows for a much more expansive view on the legacy of the Atlantic system slavery and the many cultural effects that took place outside of the Americas.
A particular highlight of the text is in its focus on Brazil in specific and slavery in South America in general. For many reasons, starting with oceanography and including civil vs. common law, there is much that is noteworthy about how slavery was practiced and ended in Brazil. I was wary about the author including this, in how the introduction suggests that it lacks a lot of the type of first-hand accounts that we have for slavery and the slave trade for for North America and the West Indies. Yet by the end of the book I wanted more. It is difficult to talk about comparable with slavery, a long standing human institution that has had many different variations, but being able to compare the different European implementations within the Americas is fruitful to understanding the nuance of the history in general.
Overall it is an excellent read. My primary complaint is that occasionally would lose the thread. The material was good, and I particularly liked the section on religion, but sometimes the author's desire to be comprehensive overrules the otherwise superior structure of the writing. It may be that it is a better textbook than a book, but give me that problem any day. Other than that, there was a stylistic tic in the way that the author discussed references that persistently distracted me, but minor, and more to do with being a person particularly sensitive to how authors talk about their sources.
Something that I particularly liked is what the book considered impossible to represent. The trend is to allow a greater fluidity in composition of narratives about enslaved people's lives in order to make up for the absence of reliable or comprehensive primary material. I usually defend this practice - I mean, Thucydides, right? - but I feel nervous about it in a Red Team sense of seeing how it could be abused.
This book gets in front of that by asserting the inscrutability of the middle passage in specific and of the Atlantic system of slavery in general. We can make artistic representations, learn all there is to know, and bring full bore all the empathy and imagination that we can muster, but the thing itself remains fundamentally unknowable with meager analogy at best. We advance our knowing best by accepting that. That is a striking claim, and one that makes the book stronger for it.
Overall, a great read, and already something that I think about as what as I would suggest as a general reference to the curious.
My thanks to the author, Ana Lucia Araujo, for writing the book, and to the publisher, University of Chicago Press, for making the ARC available to me.