Wright, African Americans in the Colonial Era

From African Origins Through the American Revolution

Abstract

Historians familiar with the Harlan Davidson American History Series have come to expect succinct summary statements and strong bibliographic essays. Donald Wright's book will thus be a welcome addition to the series. The series' editors identified a gap in the survey literature on African-American history. Colonial America has simply not been addressed in a meaningful fashion. The monographic literature is often too widely scattered to be of much value to the undergraduate reader, and when the subject of slavery is broached, it has all too often been the slavery of the cotton belt between 1830 and 1860. Wright ably summarizes the origins of slavery and the mechanics of slave trade; he looks sensitively at the issue of the origins of slavery as well as the origins of racism, carefully addressing both the presence of Anthony Johnson and other free blacks like him, but noting that patterns of discrimination toward blacks existed from the beginning of European and African colonization of the New World.