Includes bibliographical references and index.

Introduction : slavery and the West -- Empires and plantations. The Spanish conquest: destruction, enslavement and the Baroque -- Mercantil e empire and the slave plantation: Brazil leads, the Dutch, English and French refine the formula -- Plantation hierarchy, social order and th e Atlantic system -- The subversive boom. Slavery and industrializatio n -- Black aspirations and the 'Picaresque Proletariat' -- The planters back colonial revolt -- From the critique of slavery to the abolitioni st movement -- The Haitian pivot. Haitians claim the rights of man -- R esults and prospects I: slave-trade abolition -- Results and prospects II: Latin America -- The age of abolition. Abolitionism advances, but s lavery is resurgent -- Anti-slavery: its scope, character and appeal -- The keys to emancipation -- The spiral path: ambiguous victories, cont ested legacies.

A history of the rise and abolition of slavery in the Americas cover s such topics as the plantation revolution of the seventeenth century, the emergence of anti-slavery thought, and the contributions of such fi gures as Thomas Paine and Frederick Douglass.