This volume makes important contributions to the search for a new, more integrated history of the Americas. It explores the expansion and intensification during the industrial revolution of production grounded in slavery in Cuba, Brazil, and the US South—what Dale Tomich long ago labeled the second slavery, emphasizing its distinct characteristics and pivotal ties to the industrial power rising in northwest Europe and northeast North America. The authors make it clear that while local, regional, national, and industrial studies remain essential, ultimately there can be no separate histories of the United States and Latin America, of industrial transformations and expansions of slavery—if our goal is to understand the changing lives of the hemisphere's peoples as they faced the rise of industrial capitalism.
Five chapters take diverse approaches toward a common goal. Robin Blackburn, arguably the leading historian of the rise and fall of Atlantic slavery, sketches a new synthesis of...
