Slavery and other forms of unfree labour / edited by Leonie Archer

Bringing together normally self-contained areas of research, this book presents penetrating analyses of the nature and perpetuation of slavery through the ages. It includes contributions from social anthropology; economic, social, legal and oral history: psychology: sociology; literature and drama, and ranges in time from antiquity to the present day. Geographic areas looked at span West, South and East Africa, the Near East, Latin America, the Caribbean and the United States.

The first part deals with slavery in the ancient world and includes discussions on the nature of the Greek slave economy, debt bondage in biblical times, the Roman penal system, and the * legitimation of ideology through theatre and philosophy. The second part covers the modern period and deals with such subjects as slave resistance in the Caribbean, the institution of military slavery in the Sudan, the cultural influence of blacks upon whites in the United States, Latin American labour forces, and the lives of present-day Afro-American women.

Scholarly, innovative and controversial, Slavery and Other Forms of Unfree Labour presents exciting new ideas and advances the slavery debate. It will be of great interest to both the specialist and general reader.