This new series from LSU Press is strongly transnational,
featuring books bearing on antislavery and abolition in any
locale within the Atlantic world. The series is also multidisciplinary,
exploring the subjects of antislavery and abolition in as
many revealing and imaginative ways as possible. It favors
time-honored approaches such as biography, econometrics, and
military and political history no less than it showcases newer
forms of comparative and transnational study, cultural history,
demographic analysis, and studies of race, ethnicity, gender,
and historical memory.
Expanding the conventional social and chronological boundaries
of emancipation studies, the series encourages studies of
the antislavery links that existed between different countries
and during different time periods. For example, the series
reaches well beyond the traditional boundary of 1831, the
beginning of the abolition movement in the United States,
and beyond 1783, the beginning of the movement in Britain.
Likewise, it reaches forward beyond the end of the U.S. Civil
War and beyond the abolition of the apprenticeship system
in the British Caribbean.
The internationalization of the struggle against slavery
was crucial on many levels. What used to be seen as activities
of organized societies and almost exclusively that of middle-class
reformers is more and more understood to cross class, racial,
gender, and geographical boundaries. As this new series encourages
studies of the antislavery links that existed between different
countries, it contributes to a greater appreciation of the
complexity, significance, and modern-day relevance of the
important history of opposition to slavery. |