Antislavery, Abolition, and the Atlantic World

Original historical scholarship that examines opposition to the institute of slavery and processes that contributed to slavery's abolition.

R . J. M. Blackett, Andrew Jackson Professor of History, Vanderbilt University
James Brewer Stewart, James Wallace Professor of History, Macalester College

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.