From Slavery to Freedom: Comparative Studies in the Rise and Fall of Atlantic Slavery

Spanning four decades of debate on slavery and antislavery, this provocative volume by leading historian Seymour Drescher provides an in-depth comparative analysis of the transatlantic slave trade and abolition movements of nineteenth-century Europe and the Americas, and their ongoing impact on twentieth-century politics and race relations. Leading up to his influential argument that the end of slavery was not due to economic decline, but rather caused it, Drescher's early analyses focus on the dynamic interaction of economic modernization, religion, and politics in early industrial nations. Challenging the reigning historical models, Drescher expands the scope of abolition scholarship to include such overlooked contributors to the slave question as planters, merchants, Parliament, abolitionist Saints, and the working classes. More recently, Drescher has turned his attention to the compelling new questions arising from Black-Jewish relations in the United States, the role of Jews in the Atlantic slave trade, and the comparative barbarism of two great moral evils in recent world history: slavery and the holocaust. Valuable both for the vast timespan covered and its wide geographic range, From Slavery to Freedom represents a major contribution to the study of slavery and abolition by one of its most distinguished historians.