In Linking the Histories of Slavery Bonnie Martin and James F. Brooks expand the narrative of North American bondage by integrating indigenous actors and incorporating regions outside of the plantation South. Their introduction presents the volume’s major themes: the “entrepreneurial qualities of slaving” and the magnitude of enslavers’ and slaves’ migrations (xxiii). In part 1, anthropologist Catherine M. Cameron provides the volume’s foundation by surveying indigenous slave systems across North America, stressing their “considerable antiquity,” and chronicling both the slavelike experiences of captives and captive influence on captor society (10). Parts 2 and 3 feature southern, southwestern, and western case studies that trace the rise of commercial slaving, explain common challenges faced by enslavers, describe the many forms of abuse that slaves endured, and reveal captives’ varied opportunities for social and economic mobility from the colonial period to the present.
Although the sociocultural incentives for indigenous slave systems and the...
