In one form or another; slavery has existed throughout the world for millennia. It helped to change the world; and the world transformed the institution. In the 1450s; when Europeans from the small corner of the globe least enmeshed in the institution first interacted with peoples of other continents; they created; in the Americas; the most dynamic; productive; and exploitative system of coerced labor in human history. Three centuries later these same intercontinental actions produced a movement that successfully challenged the institution at the peak of its dynamism. Within another century a new surge of European expansion constructed Old World empires under the banner of antislavery. However; twentieth-century Europe itself was inundated by a new system of slavery; larger and more deadly than its earlier system of New World slavery. This book examines these dramatic expansions and contractions of the institution of slavery and the impact of violence; economics; and civil society in the ebb and flow of slavery and antislavery during the last five centuries.
#5268163 in Books Cambridge University Press 2002-04-30Original language:EnglishPDF # 1 8.98 x .79 x 5.98l; 1.30 #File Name: 0521522897356 pages
Review
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful. an excellent book on the subject matterBy K. Kennedy"In and Out of the Ghetto: Jewish-Gentile relations in late medieval and early modern Germany" by editors R. Po-chia Hsia and Hartmut Lehmann is a wonderful compilation of essays about the Jews in German lands and their relationships with Gentiles (rulers; religious officials; townspeople; and so on) during this period. It was fascinating to see how differently Jews were treated in different parts of German lands; and well as over time in the same lands as the rulers changed. This is an excellent book that provides a great deal of information about a little-studied period; and one whose history is rarely available in English translation.
