Ebook A Curse upon the Nation Race Freedom and Extermination in America and the Atlantic World Kay Wright Lewis 9780820355474 Books
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From the inception of slavery as a pillar of the Atlantic World economy, both Europeans and Africans feared their mass extermination by the other in a race war. In the United States, says Kay Wright Lewis, this ingrained dread nourished a preoccupation with slave rebellions and would later help fuel the Civil War, thwart the aims of Reconstruction, justify Jim Crow, and even inform civil rights movement strategy. And yet, says Lewis, the historiography of slavery is all but silent on extermination as a category of analysis. Moreover, little of the existing sparse scholarship interrogates the black perspective on extermination. A Curse upon the Nation addresses both of these issues.
To explain how this belief in an impending race war shaped eighteenth- and nineteenth-century American politics, culture, and commerce, Lewis examines a wide range of texts including letters, newspapers, pamphlets, travel accounts, slave narratives, government documents, and abolitionist tracts. She foregrounds her readings in the long record of exterminatory warfare in Europe and its colonies, placing lopsided reprisals against African slave revolts―or even rumors of revolts―in a continuum with past brutal incursions against the Irish, Scots, Native Americans, and other groups out of favor with the empire. Lewis also shows how extermination became entwined with ideas about race and freedom from early in the process of enslavement, making survival an important form of resistance for African peoples in America.
For African Americans, enslaved and free, the potential for one-sided violence was always present and deeply traumatic. This groundbreaking study reevaluates how extermination shaped black understanding of the Atlantic slave trade and the political, social, and economic worlds in which it thrived.
Ebook A Curse upon the Nation Race Freedom and Extermination in America and the Atlantic World Kay Wright Lewis 9780820355474 Books
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Tags : A Curse upon the Nation Race, Freedom, and Extermination in America and the Atlantic World [Kay Wright Lewis] on . From the inception of slavery as a pillar of the Atlantic World economy, both Europeans and Africans feared their mass extermination by the other in a race war. In the United States,Kay Wright Lewis,A Curse upon the Nation Race, Freedom, and Extermination in America and the Atlantic World,University of Georgia Press,082035547X,HISTORY / United States / General,History/African American,History/American,History/Historiography,Non-Fiction,SOCIAL SCIENCE / Ethnic Studies / African American Studies,SOCIAL SCIENCE / Slavery,Social Science/Anthropology - Cultural Social,Social Science/Discrimination Racism,Social Science/Ethnic Studies - African American Studies,Social Science/Slavery,Social Science/Violence in Society,UNIVERSITY PRESS,United States
A Curse upon the Nation Race Freedom and Extermination in America and the Atlantic World Kay Wright Lewis 9780820355474 Books Reviews :
A Curse upon the Nation Race Freedom and Extermination in America and the Atlantic World Kay Wright Lewis 9780820355474 Books Reviews
- Dr. Kay Wright Lewis' scholarship on the concept of race war is not only topical, but historically informative. From the terrorist Dylann Roof back to President Jefferson's "Notes on the State of Virginia," the concept of a race war has been thrown out in the discourse over ownership over the future of the United States. While thought of conceptually, I never read a work predicated on telling the story of race war in the Atlantic World. My favorite chapter was the chapter on John Brown. John Brown is one of the most controversial figures in American History. His exploits in Kansas during the Bleeding Kansas affair over the status of slavery in the territory were infamous. By the time of his raid on the federal armament at Harper's Ferry, he was well-known to southerners and northerners alike. Brown though, when organizing for the raid, did not take the advice of his Black friends. Two of them being formerly enslaved, Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass, told him of the ineffectiveness of his potential efforts. Clearly, Brown did not listen. Dr. Lewis' work reformulated how I thought about John Brown's raid in profound ways. Thank you for your work Dr. Lewis, and Howard University should be proud to have you as the newest faculty member in the History Department!
- Must read!
