His last book, Many Thousands Gone (1998), was concerned with the first two centuries of slavery in the United States. Following the plantation generation was the revolutionary generation, when worldwide views on slavery and freedom influenced domestic politics and culture. It further solidifies Ira Berlin’s secure standing as one of the generation’s preeminent scholars on the topic.”—Gary T. Edwards, H-Net Online, “Over the years, Ira Berlin has established himself as one of the foremost scholars of North American slavery. The central theme of Berlin’s work is that American slavery was an institution that changed over time… Generations of Captivity provides a sophisticated, yet readable, overview of the history of American slavery for general readers. from The Gilder Lehrman Institute Business . Denied of their freedom and even their humanity, slaves would transform Ira Berlin traces the history of African-American slavery in the United States from its beginnings in the seventeenth century to its fiery demise nearly three hundred years later. The experience of the original settlement population adapting to their new environment produced what Berlin calls the chartered generation. This epic story, told by a master historian, provides a rich understanding of the experience of African-American slaves, an experience that continues to mobilize American thought and passions today. We still live with the consequences of this institution, and we should understand what slavery meant to the generations of captivity who lived it.”—Charles B. Dew, The New York Times Book Review, “Berlin focuses on change over time as it affected patterns of African American demography, family and community life, religious beliefs and practices, and labor in the field and workshop. Animals are held in captivity in zoos, and often as pets and as livestock. Generations of Captivity covers a lot of the same territory, but in doing so takes the story up to the American Civil War (1861-5) and beyond. Generations of Captivity presents a novel way of conceptualising the long spread of slavery in America, and the ways in which Africans and African-Americans adjusted to slavery and how they too were shaped by the institution. Generations of Captivity This epic story, told by a master historian, provides a rich understanding of the experience of African-American slaves, an experience that … New American Standard Bible Generations of Captivity covers a lot of the same territory, but in doing so takes the story up to the American Civil War (1861-5) and beyond. As we celebrate Passover, after a year marked by protests for racial equality and social justice, Amelia M. Glaser, author of Songs in Dark Times: Yiddish Poetry of Struggle from Scottsboro to Palestine, reminds us of the Yiddish poets during the interwar years who drew on the trauma of pogroms to depict the suffering of other marginalized peoples and embraced a global community of the oppressed…, About & Contact | Awards | Catalogs | Conference Exhibits | eBooks | Exam Copies | News | Order | Rights | Permissions | Search | Shopping Cart | Subjects & Series, Resources for: Authors | Booksellers & Librarians | Educators | Journalists | Readers, Harvard University Press offices are located at 79 Garden Street, Cambridge, MA 02138 USA & 71 Queen Victoria Street, London EC4V 4BE UK, © 2021 President and Fellows of Harvard College | HUP Privacy Policy • HU Additional EEA Privacy Disclosures, A Message from HUP about COVID-19 (April 2020), SOCIAL SCIENCE: Ethnic Studies: American: African American & Black Studies, View more HUP titles on abolition and the American Civil War, evolutionary and adaptive genius of vegetation, The Next Shift: The Fall of Industry and the Rise of Health Care in Rust Belt America, deindustrialization, the care economy, and the living legacies of the industrial workers’ movement, Plato and the Mythic Tradition in Political Thought, how philosophy might embrace supposedly manipulative mythmaking for liberal ends, Marking Time: Art in the Age of Mass Incarceration, Island on Fire: The Revolt That Ended Slavery in the British Empire, 2004 Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, Nonfiction Category, Cleveland Foundation, 2003 Albert J. Beveridge Award, American Historical Association. Generations of Captivity resembles Berlin’s earlier overview of American slavery, Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America (1998), but it covers more chronological ground in fewer pages and more clearly targets a popular audience. Berlin’s understanding of the processes that continually transformed the lives of slaves makes Generations of Captivity essential reading for anyone interested in the evolution of antebellum America. The span of a mere two generations between Moses and his grandfather Kohath[2] is far too short to bridge a period of 430 years. Publisher: Harvard University Press. Generations of Captivity traces the history of this dismal institution from its 17th-century origins to its 19th-century destruction in the maelstrom of civil war. 25 reviews. He reveals without condescension or simplification the inspiring social structures that arose from a horrific history… This book follows up with grace and determination.”—Publishers Weekly, As we celebrate Passover, after a year marked by protests for racial equality and social justice, Amelia M. Glaser, author of Songs in Dark Times: Yiddish Poetry of Struggle from Scottsboro to Palestine, reminds us of the Yiddish poets during the interwar years who drew on the trauma of pogroms to depict the suffering of other marginalized peoples and embraced a global community of the oppressed…, About & Contact | Awards | Catalogs | Conference Exhibits | eBooks | Exam Copies | News | Order | Rights | Permissions | Search | Shopping Cart | Subjects & Series, Resources for: Authors | Booksellers & Librarians | Educators | Journalists | Readers, Harvard University Press offices are located at 79 Garden Street, Cambridge, MA 02138 USA & 71 Queen Victoria Street, London EC4V 4BE UK, © 2021 President and Fellows of Harvard College | HUP Privacy Policy • HU Additional EEA Privacy Disclosures, A Message from HUP about COVID-19 (April 2020), SOCIAL SCIENCE: Ethnic Studies: American: African American & Black Studies, Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America, View more HUP titles on abolition and the American Civil War, evolutionary and adaptive genius of vegetation, The Next Shift: The Fall of Industry and the Rise of Health Care in Rust Belt America, deindustrialization, the care economy, and the living legacies of the industrial workers’ movement, Plato and the Mythic Tradition in Political Thought, how philosophy might embrace supposedly manipulative mythmaking for liberal ends, Marking Time: Art in the Age of Mass Incarceration, Island on Fire: The Revolt That Ended Slavery in the British Empire, 2004 Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, Nonfiction Category, Cleveland Foundation, 2003 Albert J. Beveridge Award, American Historical Association. In Generations of Captivity, Prof. Berlin describes slavery as five chronologically overlapping sets of "generations." This is not how I understand the distinction. By incorporating the nineteenth century slave experience, not the wider history of Atlantic slavery, Berlin has added immeasurably to our understanding of the ‘peculiar institution,’ as well as our understanding of antebellum America.”—J. Generations of Captivity: A History of African American Slaves Generations of Captivity tells the story of the evolution of slavery in what would become the United States. He comes closer than any other contemporary historian to giving us an opportunity—in a single, readable volume—to come to grips with a subject very few of us wish to think about but which all of us surely need to consider: how millions of white Americans over the course of three centuries came to hold millions of black Americans in chattel bondage while managing to lose nary a moment’s sleep over their complicity in this monstrous enterprise… Berlin has given us a moving, insightful account of slavery in the United States. It would be a suitable book for an undergraduate survey of American history or a specialized course on the history of slavery—or for a long-time student of American slavery who is groping for synthesis. Readers will not soon forget the story he has told, nor should they. Berlin's understanding of the processes that continually transformed the lives of slaves makes Generations of Captivity essential reading for anyone … Connecting the “Charter Generation” to the development of Atlantic society in the seventeenth century, the “Plantation Generation” to the reconstruction of colonial society in the eighteenth century, the “Revolutionary Generation” to the Age of Revolutions, and the “Migration Generation” to American expansionism in the nineteenth century, Berlin integrates the history of slavery into the larger story of American life. An example in humans is imprisonment. Slavery was born out of violence. R. Oldfield, History, “The history of slavery in the United States can be divided into five parts, writes esteemed historian Ira Berlin. So all the generations from Abraham to David are fourteen generations, from David until the captivity in Babylon are fourteen generations, and from the captivity in Babylon until the Christ are fourteen generations. Generations of Captivity is more than a work of synthesis, however. Generations of Captivity traces the history of this dismal institution from its 17th-century origins to its 19th-century destruction in the maelstrom of civil war. Generations of Captivity offers a reflective synthesis and broad narrative. Connecting the "Charter Generation" to the development of Atlantic society in the seventeenth century, the "Plantation Generation" to the reconstruction of colonial society in the eighteenth century, the … $29.95 (384p) ISBN 978-0-674-01061-1. Generations of Captivity: A History of African-American Slaves is an extension of an earlier work by Berlin entitled Many Thousands Gone (1998). 10 years ago. Home; Subject; History; However, upon closer introspection, the texts' portrayal of slavery is not alike. Berlin: Generations Of Captivity: A History Of African-American Slaves Published by LSU Digital Commons, 2004. than the latter. Generations Of Captivity And Slavery History Essay. Professor Berlin discussed his book [Generations of Captivity: A History of African-American Slaves], published by Harvard University Press. Ira Berlin’s Generations of Captivity: A History of African-American Slaves (2003) is an analytical work of historical research and synthesis that traces the development of American slavery from the 17th century to national Emancipation. Here, however, Berlin offers a dynamic vision, a major reinterpretation in which slaves and their owners continually renegotiated the terms of captivity. He labels them ‘generations,’ namely charter generations, plantation generations, revolutionary generations, migration generations, and freedom generations. Information about the book, Generations of Captivity: A History of African-American Slaves (Revised): the Nonfiction, Paperback, by Ira Berlin (Belknap Press, Sep 30, 2004) #readingblack Ira Berlin: Generations in Captivity: Slavery in America. Moving fluidly, the author navigates the current of historical transition from one era to another and one region to another. Berlin reflects on the contrasts between the southern experience of slavery and the North’s experience and challenges with its freedmen.”—Vernon Ford, Booklist, “Berlin’s insightful scholarship demonstrates that U.S. slavery was a complex, constantly changing institution that differed a great deal over time and place. Essential.”—Randall M. Miller, Library Journal, “Eminent historian Berlin revisits and extends by a century the territory of his honored and groundbreaking Many Thousands Gone… Berlin recapitulates the argument of his earlier, prize-winning work, delineating ‘the making and remaking of slavery’ as a matter of ‘Generations’… While preserving the terrible complexity and diversity of North American slavery, Berlin offers a compact scholarly account of the transformation of a society with slaves into a slave society. The book identifies five ‘generations’ of Africans and their descendants as they coped with societal shifts taking place around them as their world came into brutal contact with … A fifth one, whose experience was … His scholarship on slavery and race…and his complete command of the enormous literature on slavery now come together to inform this compelling history. Here, however, Berlin offers a dynamic vision, a major reinterpretation in which slaves and their owners continually renegotiated the terms of captivity. This new work summarizes the rich history presented in the author’s brilliant Many Thousands Gone and extends the account to the Civil War and emancipation.”—R. Generations of Captivity covers a lot of the same territory, but in doing so takes the story up to the American Civil War (1861-5) and beyond. Throughout, Berlin has crafted a trenchant review of the salient elements of African-American enslavement… This award-winning sequel to Many Thousands Gone is an admirable compliment to the author’s sweeping overview of slavery in America. Here Berlin carefully delineates the ways slavery varied according to time and place and compare slavery in the Americas, mapping the migrations of peoples from Africa to America and then across the South in its various incarnations, discovering within slave life the roots of African American religions, family, folkways, foodways, crafts, and more. In the process, he illuminates the rich complexity of slavery as it was shaped by various colonial powers (Spanish, French, British) in port cities and in rural areas… This compact volume offers an impressive overview of historic transformations and regional variations in the institution.”—Jacqueline Jones, The Washington Post, “Ira Berlin, in his Generations of Captivity: A History of African-American Slaves, shows that the Northern states, despite having gradually emancipated their own slaves between the Revolution and the 1830s, were deeply implicated in the protection and preservation of slavery in the South. University of Maryland Distinguished University Professor Ira Berlin suggests that the unique circumstances of American slavery continue to shape the nation even today. Ira Berlin, Author, Berlin, Author . Northern free blacks agitated vigorously for the freedom of their brethren in bondage, but the discrimination and violence to which they were exposed in the North left them for the most part disenfranchised, impoverished, and (especially after the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850) unsure whether they could maintain their own freedom against slave catchers and kidnappers.”—George M. Frederickson, The New York Review of Books, “Where Generations of Captivity differs from previous histories is in its emphatically bottom-up approach, looking at slavery almost exclusively from the point of view of the slaves themselves, and in its relentless emphasis on the institution’s cruelty.”—Howard Temperley, The Times Literary Supplement, “Ira Berlin’s exhaustive study of slavery…presents countless challenging conclusions that will spawn further debate about the peculiar institution.”—The Dallas Morning News, “Generations of Captivity presents a novel way of conceptualising the long spread of slavery in America, and the ways in which Africans and African-Americans adjusted to slavery and how they too were shaped by the institution. Generations of Captivity Prologue Summary & Analysis Prologue Summary: “Slavery and Freedom” Berlin presents his central argument and outlines the structure of his historical synthesis. The result is an absorbing work that demonstrates convincingly that slavery was not a static or monolithic structure but an evolving institution that changed dramatically between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries… As one might expect, Berlin pieces together this complex history with great skill and authority. “Ira Berlin has written what will undoubtedly become one of the indispensable books on North American slavery. Prisoners of war are usually held in captivity by a government hostile to their own. Berlin’s understanding of the processes that continually transformed the lives of slaves makes Generations of Captivity essential reading for anyone interested in the evolution of antebellum America. What distinguished societies-with-slaves was the fact that slaves were marginal to the central productive processes. Generations of Captivity. 1) The Charter Generations of Africans in North America before the plantation system emerged were made up of slaves who were intimately familiar with European culture and worked to integrate themselves into the larger society. Captivity, or being held captive, is a state wherein humans or other animals are confined to a particular space and prevented from leaving or moving freely. Berlin emphasizes changes in the slaves themselves and in the institution of slavery from one generation to the next… This is an excellent survey of the history of slavery for family historians, especially those who specialize in African American research.”—Christopher A. Nordmann, National Genealogical Society Quarterly, “This new study allows Berlin to make a close reading of the explosive scholarship about black life and slavery in the past five or so years… Berlin’s configuration of the first half of the nineteenth century as the ‘migration generations’ fuses together the saga of western development, the internal slave trade, the Underground Railroad, and the transformation of northern states from societies with slaves to freedom grounds… Mine is but a partial recounting of the complexity and thoroughness of Berlin’s superb scholarly reach. Generations Of Captivity And Slavery History Essay. GENERATIONS OF CAPTIVITY: A History of African-American Slaves. Most Americans, black and white, have a singular vision of slavery, one fixed in the mid-nineteenth century when most American slaves grew cotton, resided in the deep South, and subscribed to Christianity. 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