In the Hands of Strangers

“This collection is designed to offer readers perspectives on a major element of American slavery—the slave trade. The great strength of this book is that it documents the slave trade as a lived experience by the enslaved, the slaveholders, and those who rationalized and attacked the system. The current historiography of slavery tends to emphasize the ‘forced labor’ component of the institution. By contrast, the thrust of these readings is upon what one might call the anthropology of slavery—its impact upon the bodies, minds, emotions, and the elemental social structures (families and kinship) of the enslaved, and of those who had power over them.”

—Seymour Drescher, University of Pittsburgh

“This is a wonderfully complete work that stands in contrast to most documentary collections of slave trade sources, which tend to cover only the Atlantic trade. In recent years, the internal slave trade has attracted a good deal of scholarly attention. The strength of this unique work is that it is so solid in its discussion of the middle passage, but equally comprehensive as the trade moved onto land and even headed west into the heartland.”

—Douglas R. Egerton,Le Moyne College

“The strength of Robert Edgar Conrad’s In the Hands of Strangers is that an engaging collection of sixty-seven documents that places the momentous issue of slavery in historical context. The tripartite format of the anthology is innovative and extensive.”

—Lawrence B. Goodheart Pennsylvania History

“An excellent starting point for those looking to acquaint themselves with one of the fundamental processes of American slavery.”

—Matt Clavin Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography

“Conrad has done a fine job in assembling interesting and useful material that should appeal to scholars of slavery as well as students at the undergraduate and graduate levels.”

—Stanley L. Engerman Civil War History

“This is Robert E. Conrad’s second collection of primary texts on slavery; the first was Children of God’s Fire: A Documentary History of Black Slavery in Brazil (1984 [Penn State, 1994]). As with that volume, Conrad has done an excellent job of placing each document in context and otherwise satisfying the disciplinary requirements for this type of publication.

Without doubt, his book on North America and slave trading will become a useful text at both the advanced undergraduate and graduate levels, and many scholars will in fact find the selection a useful compendium.”

—Paul E. Lovejoy North Carolina Historical Review