Reckoning with Slavery

“Jennifer L. Morgan examines the transition to racialized slavery in the early modern Atlantic world with innovative research methods and original analysis. She brilliantly accounts for the emergence of an unholy alliance between a novel proficiency with numbers and the hierarchical classification of human difference, which helped to make kinship into a commodity. This is essential reading for anyone who wonders how Black humanity ceased to matter to some, and why centuries later we must still proclaim the worth of Black lives.” -- Vincent Brown, author of * Tacky’s Revolt: The Story of an Atlantic Slave War *
“Jennifer L. Morgan makes an original, innovative, and creative intervention in the study of race and gender that establishes the groundwork necessary for revising our knowledge of the systems of trade and the commodification of peoples in the nineteenth century. Reckoning with Slavery is essential reading for anyone in the social sciences and the humanities who wants to understand the formation of the modern world. A major work.” -- Hazel V. Carby, author of * Imperial Intimacies: A Tale of Two Islands *
"Reckoning with Slavery challenges historians who have reckoned with slavery in the numerical sense without reckoning in the intellectual and moral sense with the subjectivity and intellectual work of enslaved people. . . . The threads of this rich and powerful work will generate new scholarship for years to come." -- Diana Paton * Black Perspectives *
"There is much about this book that's deeply impressive. The depth and breadth of the research give a solidity to the argument that belies the difficult and fragmentary sources." -- Tim Lockley * Ethnic and Racial Studies *
"One of the most illuminating aspects of Morgan’s work is how it invites us to reconsider the data we have about the slave trade. . . . Many of the stories of enslaved women might never be recovered, but Reckoning with Slavery shows how their stories might still be told by reading their silences creatively. The absence of women from the history of slave revolts, for instance, might not necessarily mean that they failed to participate in these uprisings or that they only participated in tiny, quotidian ways. It might also mean that their deeds were erased because women were so foundational to these uprisings that they inspired unease. Such a creative methodology paves the way for new, provocative historical narratives to be written." -- Li Qi Peh * Critical Inquiry *
"As Black women lead worldwide movements to affirm the worth of Black lives in the face of white-supremacist violence today, Reckoning with Slavery illuminates some of the roots of this radical tradition of imagining Black futurity and making the world anew against the seemingly all-powerful forces of the state and the market." -- Eduarda Lira Araujo * E3W Review of Books *
"Jennifer L. Morgan’s second book is one that will change the way scholars of slavery and the Black Atlantic think about the archives, enslaved women, and Black women’s theoretical and methodological offerings then and now. . . . It should become essential reading for academic audiences, college students, and any organization interested in reparations." -- Deirdre Cooper Owens * Studies in Romanticism *
"[Reckoning with Slavery] sets a new bar for historians of the early modern era and of Western modernity. Morgan helps us see capitalism as racial capitalism, the radicalism of the Enlightenment as Black radicalism, and African women as central to both – and now that we see, there is no unseeing." -- Mariana L. R. Dantas * Journal of Early American History *
"Morgan’s book will be welcomed by scholars who study the history of slavery and women’s history. She concentrates on women, their bodies, their experiences, their feelings, and their decisions. The book should be required reading in graduate courses on the history of slavery, economic history, the history of the body, and women’s history. Finally, it should be included in historical methodology classes due to its excellent incorporation of theory and its outstanding analysis of primary sources." -- Karol K. Weaver * H-Slavery, H-Net Reviews *
"Reckoning with Slavery is a valuable addition to the studies of enslaved women, slavery, slavery and capitalism, and the violence of the archive. It is a wonderful example of the importance of centering the lives and experiences of enslaved women and their own understanding of the connections between kinship, slavery, and capitalism." -- Allison Madar * H-Early-America, H-Net Reviews *
"For slavery’s early history, especially the role that gender, kinship, and capitalism played in the rise and perpetuation of human bondage throughout the Atlantic World, this is a book to be reckoned with, one that is sure to be required reading. I predict that it will remain that way for a long time to come." -- Eliga Gould * The Americas *
"Through her whole career, Jennifer Morgan has blazed the trail for scholars seeking to understand the foundational dynamics of reproduction in the Atlantic World. In Reckoning with Slavery, she has crafted yet more theoretical considerations by which to comprehend the intersection of gender and capitalism, and this book will undoubtedly stimulate yet more rounds of discussion and debate. It is a text that will reach and impact many scholarly communities: those studying slavery, gender, family, the economy, and relations of power. It will also serve as a critical guide to face the new reality of reproduction in the United States going forward." -- Daniel Livesay * Journal of Family History *
"Reckoning with Slavery is, simply put, a brilliant and important work. I am in awe of Morgan’s achievement." -- Carla Gardina Pestana * New West Indian Guide/Niewe West-Indische Gids *
“Morgan’s contribution to the study of women in the slave trade is richly interdisciplinary and moves seamlessly between the primary sources of three empires . . . Reckoning with Slavery is an incredible contribution to many fields in the study of the slave trade and slavery.” -- Chris J. Gismondi * Slavery & Abolition *