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Subject: H-South Review: Edwards on Berlin, _Generations of Captivity_

H-NET BOOK REVIEW
Published by [log in to unmask] (December 2006)

Ira Berlin. _Generations of Captivity: A History of African-American
Slaves_. Cambridge: Belknap Press, 2003. ii + 374 pp. Tables,
abbreviations, notes, acknowledgements, index. $29.95 (cloth), ISBN
0-674-01061-2.

Reviewed for H-South by Gary T. Edwards, Department of History, Arkansas
State University

Anyone who teaches the first half of U.S. history has grown accustomed
to the popular misapprehension that American slavery possessed a
monolithic sameness until the institution's eventual demise during the
Civil War.  Ira Berlin charges to the aid of all who labor to
demonstrate that slavery entailed meaningful change across three
evolutionary centuries.  _Generations of Captivity_ offers a reflective
synthesis and broad narrative.  Moving fluidly, the author navigates the
current of historical transition from one era to another and one region
to another.  Throughout, Berlin has crafted a trenchant review of the
salient elements of African-American enslavement.  One of the author's
stated goals is to draw upon the abundance of new scholarship (well over
two hundred books) during the five years since his highly acclaimed
_Many Thousands Gone_.  The number itself is a testament to the fecund
nature of recent slave historiography and the valuable service offered
through Berlin's efforts.  He reminds us that, like all other human
interactions, slavery also rested on a continual process of negotiation.

Neatly divided into four primary sections, Berlin effectively employs a
generational research model beginning with the appropriately titled
"charter" generations.  Slavery's formative years, by default, will
always remain shrouded beneath a greater degree of mystery than
antebellum slavery.  Nevertheless, Berlin is perhaps at his boldest when
he affirms the significance of the charter period and its key players: 
Atlantic creoles.  Influenced by two centuries of European contact along
coastal Africa and often finding themselves in the West Indies prior to
their mainland arrival, creoles seemingly possessed a cosmopolitan
sagaciousness born of their unique context.  Anthony Johnson, perhaps
the most well-documented instance of seventeenth-century creolization,
represented the possibilities before the legal codification of racism in
colonial Chesapeake Bay.  Berlin does not limit himself only to the
famous example of Johnson.  However, his inclusion of the free black
tobacco planter is indicative of both Johnson's significance and the
constraints of limited evidence from American slavery's genesis.  Berlin
reminds us that one of the distinctive features of the charter
generations was their diminutive size relative to their influence.  It
remains a tantalizing notion of counter-factual history to re-imagine a
Chesapeake where Anthony and Mary Johnson's great-grandchildren
prospered alongside eighteenth-century white neighbors.  Instead, they
became the objects of financial security in reflection of the
circumscribed nature of their ancestors' influence.

Moving the schema forward, Berlin examines "plantation" generations.  
Although the degradation of black life possessed numerous sources, "the
largest was the growth of the plantation" (p. 54).  Indeed, degradation
is the fundamental variable which shadows the emergence of this new
paradigm.  Whereas creoles experienced racism, they nevertheless existed
in something like an embryonic phase of potential societal development.

The future remained to be set.  The plantation changed that.  It emerged
as midwife and oversaw the birth of institutionalized racism sustained
by the growth of agricultural capitalism.  The monolithic scope of these
new plantations exerted an inescapable gravitational pull.  Everything
soon moved around them in a prescribed orbit.  Both their size and
insatiable labor needs fundamentally altered eighteenth-century America.
Most importantly, Atlantic creoles (such as the Johnsons) largely
disappeared from the colonial landscape.  Berlin places great
significance on this transformation.  The exponential demand for labor
could no longer be met via the West Indies' surplus or from limited
experimentation with enslaved Native Americans.  African slaves from the
continent's interior now composed the bulk of forced migrants to
colonial America.  Unlike their "charter" generation predecessors, they
increasingly relied on preserving past cultural links as a means to
endure an impossible situation.  Planters likewise found themselves in
the midst of a generational transition.  Consolidation of resources
necessitated consolidation of power.  A new sense of white mastery
yielded a reciprocal increase in societal hierarchy.  Lastly, Berlin
spreads his analysis beyond the Atlantic South to the Gulf Coast and the
North as he offers a balanced appraisal of slavery's significance
throughout colonial America.  While this was not Berlin's purpose, it
stands as an important rebuttal to the prevalent misconception outside
academia that many historians seem either unaware or unconcerned about
slavery's existence in the North.[1]

Next, Berlin ushers in the broadly defined "revolutionary" generations.

The author utilizes a broad canvas as he paints a contrast between the
promise of the American Revolution and the shock of the ensuing Cotton
Revolution.  The accompanying emphasis on gradual emancipation and the
opposing influence of cotton yielded a more thoroughly dichotomized
nation.  Berlin carefully weighs the limited gains of a "free" North in
the midst of what Don Fehrenbacher called a "slaveholding republic." 
While this is familiar ground, Berlin skillfully constructs the
foundation for what may become the most enduring section of the book.

"Migration" generations illustrates African-American enslavement at its
zenith as an institution; fiercely disruptive and passionately
contested, it shaped every facet of American life.  While previous
chapters chronologically cover the same material as _Many Thousands
Gone_, this section moves into new territory.  Berlin reaffirms how
different slavery looked at the end of the eighteenth century compared
with the middle of the nineteenth.  Cotton cultivation, residence in the
black belt, and Christianity all emerged as new components during this
period.  He correctly points out that the specific reasons why this
happened remain imprecise.  Certainly, this will serve as an impetus for
new studies by scholars who invoke Berlin's expertise as their mandate
for renewed analysis of an imperfectly understood process.

The chapter also provides what may become one of Berlin's more memorable
contributions to the arena of interpretive discourse.  He describes the
forced migrations of the nineteenth century as a "Second Middle
Passage," thus offering a potent metaphor for those who wish to either
agree or dispute the veracity of the accompanying mental image.  Berlin
interprets this generational phenomenon in the strongest language: "it
was the central event in the lives of African-American people between
the American Revolution and slavery's final demise in December 1865" (p.

161).  Berlin concludes the entire book with an epilogue and gives a
parting nod to the existence of "freedom" generations and its array of
unique challenges.

Overall, criticisms of this work are more likely to revolve around form
instead of substance.  Some readers may question how successfully Berlin
proved his assertion in the prologue that the better analytical
framework for U.S. history is found in the binary distinction between
slaves and slaveholders rather than slavery and freedom.  Such a notion
seems to omit the bulk of the nation's inhabitants, white
nonslaveholders, who neither owned nor were themselves owned by others.

Arguably, the division between slavery and freedom still retains greater
interpretive flexibility.  Berlin's work also stands as an important
barometer, indicative of the current climate as well as the future
"weather" within the field.  Although it was not emphasized in this
review, _Generations of Captivity_ is a vigorous affirmation of the
seminal importance of human "agency" and its continuing historiographic
vitality.  If this book is any indication, the forecast for slavery
studies suggests a continuation of the "reign" of agency.[2]  This
award-winning sequel to _Many Thousands Gone_ is an admirable compliment
to the author's sweeping overview of slavery in America.  It further
solidifies Ira Berlin's secure standing as one of the generation's
preeminent scholars on the topic.

Notes

[1].  Anne Farrow, Joel Lang, and Jennifer Frank, _Complicity: How the
North Promoted, Prolonged, and Profited from Slavery_ (New York: 
Ballantine Books, 2005).  The publication of this work two years after
_Generations of Captivity_ and its popular reception as a new idea is
indicative of the gulf which still needs to be bridged between an
interested public and an introverted academy.

[2].  A provocative critique of the utility of "agency" overall is found
in Peter Coclanis's review of _Generations of Captivity_.  See,
Coclanis, _William and Mary Quarterly_ 61, no. 3 (July 2004): 544-556.


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