152
PARTISAN REVIEW
REASSESSING SLAVERY
Circumstan ces delayed the pu blication of th is review, but we f eel that
th e books under considerat ion and the qualit y of the review itself merit
its publication even at th is lat e dat e.
SLAVES WITHOUT MASTERS: THE FREE NEGRO IN THE ANTEBEL–
LUM SOUTH. By Ira Berlin. Pantheon Books. $15.00.
THE PROBLEM OF SLAVERY IN THE AGE OF REVOLUTION
1770-1823. By David Brion Davis. Cornell University Press. $17.50.
TIME ON THE CROSS: THE ECONOMICS OF AMERICAN NEGRO
SLAVERY. By Robert William Fogel and Stanley L. Engerman. Little,
Brown, and Company, 2 vols. $8.95, $12.50.
ROLL, JORDAN, ROLL: THE WORLD THE SLAVES MADE. By Eugene
D. Genovese. Pantheon Books. $17.50.
In the past twenty yea rs a comroversy about the na ture of
history has raged with an inten sity unequall ed sin ce the fundamemal
conflicts about histori cal method a round the turn of thi s century. This
turmoil has been fed by the convergence o f two different innovati ve
impulses. One of these impul ses has come o ut of the politi cal and
social radi calization associa ted transitoril y with the New Left and more
fundamentally with the con cern for the ri ghts o f underprivil eged
groups. The radi cals have urged th e rev ision of hi stor ical standards
toward what in the pas t is relevant to the reform ra ther than to the
benign explana tion of the present. The o ther impulse, comin g out of
an autonomous academi c radi cali sm, has resulted in the mass ive
importati on of qualitative concepts and qu antita tive techniques from
the behavioral sciences into hi stor y, and has expanded the histori cal
arena to include kinds of peopl e and acti viti es formerl y considered
essenti all y unhi storica l. The academi c radi cals a ttacked a t the p o int of
the traditional ambi guity between the definiti ons of hi story as the story
of ch ange in the past and as the depi cti on o f the integral human past,
storied or not, changeful or no l. They found an equall y vulnerable
point of a ttack in the criteri on o f " representa tive'" selecti on in tradi–
tional history (with its frequent assump ti on tha t a society was auto–
mati call y represem ed by its accessi ble documents). The en la rgement of
