From Chattel Slaves to Wage Slaves: Dynamics of Labour Bargaining in the Americas by Mary Turner (Editor)

ISBN: 9780253210012 / 9789768100535 / 9780852557129

Publisher ‏ : ‎ James Currey Ltd, September 21, 1995

Paperback, 320 pages

This is a valuablecollection of essays which gives fresh perspectives and interesting empirical dataon the modes of labor bargaining by New World slaves and on the transition from'chattel' to 'wage' slavery." -- New West Indian Guide/Nieuwe West-IndischeGids "Of uniformly high quality, these essays underline thefluidity and dynamic of bargaining processes, the diversity of political andeconomic contexts, and the importance of external factors.... will provokediscussion on parallels between capitalist agriculture and capitalist industrialorganization, and will fuel debates on slave as proletarian, and on the notions of'peasant breach' and the two economies." --Choice " These essays] provide important answers to questionsrelating to levels of slave subsistence, the material conditions of the enslaved, the control mechanisms of owners, the contexts which generated labor bargaining onthe part of the enslaved and the reasons owners/employers acquiesced to laborers'demands rather than rely on the coercive power of the whip." -- LaborHistory " The] contributors deserve commendation for makingsalutary advances towards developing an integrated analysis of the history oflabouring people in slavery and freedom that transcends the particularities of theirlegal status." -- Slavery & Abolition ..". thiscollection addresses an important topic and will serve as a valuable resource forscholars and students of comparative slavery in the Americas." -- Judy Bieber, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque The status of labor duringslavery and post-emancipation in the Caribbean and the Americas. Contributorsinvestigate the terms under which slaves in the Caribbean, the Southern States, andLatin America worked and how they struggled to establish informal contractterms.