The Overthrow of Colonial Slavery Paperback - 1989

Media reviews

“... a challenge to those who fondly suppose that slavery declined as ideas of Western ‘enlightenment’ spread ... Blackburn deserves praise for undermining complacency about the past—and the present.”—Christopher Hitchens, New York Newsday

“... an incisive synthesis of developments in North America, the Caribbean and Latin America. Blackburn’s book is bold and original ... One of the great strengths of The Overthrow of Colonial Slavery is its insistence that the slaves themselves were key players—and not only in Haiti.”—Richard Dunn, Times Literary Supplement

“... one of the finest studies of slavery and abolition to appear in many years.”—Eric Foner, Dissident

“... the first historian since Eric Williams to present a comprehensive interpretation. But Blackburn, profiting from and admirably synthesising the vast scholarship produced since Capitalism and Slavery (1944), is far less rigid and doctrinaire, much more attuned to the workings of politics. Unlike Williams, he includes slavery throughout the Western hemisphere ... Blackburn’s narrative, so rich in significant detail, demonstrates the fallacy of divorcing an abstract ‘humanitarian sensibility’ either from the political and class struggles within the British metropolis or from the militant action of colonial planters, the free blacks and the slaves themselves.”—David Brion Vavis, New York Review of Books

“Blackburn’s highly intelligent and well-written book is a substantial contribution. In this story the central event is the French Revolution.”—Victor Kiernen, London Review of Books