A01=Christa Dierksheide
abolition
Age Group_Uncategorized
Age Group_Uncategorized
Atlantic
Author_Christa Dierksheide
automatic-update
Category1=Non-Fiction
Category=HBJK
Category=HBTS
Category=NHK
Category=NHTS
COP=United States
Delivery_Pre-order
economics
eq_bestseller
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
ethics
Format=BB
Format_Hardback
injustice
Language_English
PA=Temporarily unavailable
philosophy
Price_€20 to €50
PS=Active
race
softlaunch
Product details
- ISBN 9780813936215
- Format: Hardback
- Weight: 576g
- Dimensions: 164 x 242mm
- Publication Date: 14 Oct 2014
- Publisher: University of Virginia Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
- Language: English
Secure
checkout
Fast Shipping
Easy returns
Christa Dierksheide argues that “enlightened” slaveowners in the British Caribbean and the American South, neither backward reactionaries nor freedom-loving hypocrites, thought of themselves as modern, cosmopolitan men with a powerful alternative vision of progress in the Atlantic world. Instead of radical revolution and liberty, they believed that amelioration - defined by them as gradual progress through the mitigation of social or political evils such as slavery - was the best means of driving the development and expansion of New World societies.
Interrogating amelioration as an intellectual concept among slaveowners, Dierksheide uses a transnational approach that focuses on provincial planters rather than metropolitan abolitionists, shedding new light on the practice of slavery in the Anglophone Atlantic world. She argues that amelioration - of slavery and provincial society more generally - was a dominant concept shared by enlightened planters who sought to “improve” slavery toward its abolition, as well as by those who sought to ameliorate the institution in order to expand the system. By illuminating the common ground shared between supposedly anti- and pro-slavery provincials, she provides a powerful alternative to the usual story of liberal progress in the plantation Americas. Amelioration, she demonstrates, went well beyond the master-slave relationship, underpinning Anglo-American imperial expansion throughout the Atlantic world.
Interrogating amelioration as an intellectual concept among slaveowners, Dierksheide uses a transnational approach that focuses on provincial planters rather than metropolitan abolitionists, shedding new light on the practice of slavery in the Anglophone Atlantic world. She argues that amelioration - of slavery and provincial society more generally - was a dominant concept shared by enlightened planters who sought to “improve” slavery toward its abolition, as well as by those who sought to ameliorate the institution in order to expand the system. By illuminating the common ground shared between supposedly anti- and pro-slavery provincials, she provides a powerful alternative to the usual story of liberal progress in the plantation Americas. Amelioration, she demonstrates, went well beyond the master-slave relationship, underpinning Anglo-American imperial expansion throughout the Atlantic world.
Christa Dierksheide is Historian at the Robert H. Smith International Center for Jefferson Studies at Monticello, USA.
