... from it. The economic accounts of slavery are presented as objective. "Facts" and figures are used to analyse the profitability of slavery. Ernest Williams, for example in From Columbus to Castro: the history of the Caribbean, 1492-1969 (1970) provides a lot of numerical data detailing the rise ... found in earlier writings" (1971: 2). If true, this means the conclusions of these arguments are of little value. In Capitalism and Slavery (1944) Williams discusses the "origins of Negro slavery". He stresses the idea that black slavery was "an economic phenomenon. Slavery was not born of ra...

• Word Count: 1309
• Approx Pages: 5
• Has Bibliography

... the ability to read and write was crucial to both religious practice and to the assertion of individual and political rights. As Henry Louis Gates, Jr. explains, "The act of writing for the slave constituted the act of creating a public, historical self." Since literacy presented slaves with a means in which to assert their humanity, white slave holders in the South actively ... which many slaves strove to exemplify. For the most part, however, most slave children were legally deprived of an education of any kind. A slave who was capable of reading or writing was probable to attempt to ...

• Word Count: 2340
• Approx Pages: 9
• Grade Level: Undergraduate