AMERICAN SLAVERY TEN YEARS LATER

American Slavery, 1619–1877. By Peter Kolchin. New York: Hill & Wang, 2003. xviii + 328 pp. Tables, notes, bibliographic essay and index. $14.00.

Manisha Sinha
University of Massachusetts, Amherst

Peter Kolchin's American Slavery, first published in 1993 in the widely acclaimed American Century Series edited by Eric Foner, is a useful and masterly survey of the topic. The unexpected popularity of this book as a text for undergraduate United States history courses, fueled by a growing interest in slavery studies and African American history, has resulted in the publication of a new edition in 2003. Unfortunately, the 2003 edition does not contain any substantially new material or revisions of the main chapters except for a new afterword and bibliographic essay that discuss briefly or name some of the recent historical scholarship on slavery. The success of this book stems largely from the fact that it was the first comprehensive historical synthesis on racial slavery in the United States. Unlike other textbooks on slavery that were either documentary collections or confined to certain periods in American history, Kolchin's work spanned the life of the institution from its origins until its demise in the Civil War.