![]() ![]() But these books, and movies like 12 Years a Slave, have also reinforced the popular “black and white” image of slavery - an injustice perpetrated by whites against Africans and their descendants, mainly in the antebellum South. ![]() ![]() Recent and acclaimed books by Edward Baptist, Sven Beckert, and Walter Johnson have illuminated the economic calculations behind planter cruelty and the connections among slavery, capitalism, and American expansion. Racial strife in the present is drawing new attention to the racialized injustice and inequality in our past. In popular culture and in scholarship, slavery is having a moment. But in fact they describe historical events in the Bahamas, Central Mexico, and the American continent’s Western frontier - and the slaves were Indians. These searing images might bring to mind the terrible history of African slavery in the United States. Violent slave owners using torture and rape to force more work out of their captives. Lines of chained humans marching toward slave markets under the watchful eyes of armed guards. Ruthless European slave traders emptying villages and forcing terrified victims onto ships bound for the Atlantic. The Granger Collection, New York A line engraving depicts a captured Native American being sent into slavery by colonists in the 17th century. ![]()
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