Slavery and Forced Migration in the Antebellum South

Damian Alan Pargas is an Associate Professor of Social and Economic History at Leiden University. Specializing in North American slavery, he is the author of The Quarters and the Fields: Slave Families in the Non-Cotton South (2010) as well as numerous academic articles for journals such as Slavery and Abolition, the Journal of Family History, the Journal of Early American History, and American Nineteenth Century History. In 2011, he was granted a prestigious three-year Veni postdoctoral fellowship from the Dutch Council for Scientific Research (NWO) and a visiting research fellowship from the John F. Kennedy Institute for North American Studies at the Freie Universität of Berlin. Pargas is also an editor for the journal Itinerario: Journal of European Expansion and Globalisation and the secretary of the Netherlands Association for American Studies.

• Introduction; Part I. Migration: 1. Valuable bodies; 2. The gathering storm; 3. Changing places; Part II. Assimilation: 4. Cogs in the wheel; 5. Managing newcomers; 6. Slave crucibles; Conclusion.

'While much has been written about African slaves' experiences upon arriving in Colonial America, Pargas's work investigates the largely understudied subject of American-born slaves and how their experiences as migrants affected their life experiences and identity formation. By addressing this previously ignored area of history, the book better informs one's understanding of slavery, of the wide variety of slaves' experiences, and of slaves' struggles for agency over their own lives in the pre-Civil War South. Summing up: highly recommended.' T. K. Byron, Choice