BOOKS
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history call ed fo r by bo th kinds of radi cals accommodated in principle
both old and n ew standards, but often eno ugh there was a clash
between the two sets of standard s for mastery over the intersections o r
even over the entirety o f an extended and homogenized hi storical
domain .
Obviously, the two kinds o f radicali sm-sociopolitical and
academi c-have converged in th eir oppos iti on to the elitism and
fortuitousness o f representa ti ve criteri a in traditi onal hi sto ry, and in
their common espo usal of the ina rti cul ate majority and its characteri s–
tic activiti es as the authenti c subj ects of a humanized hi story. However,
the two kinds of radi ca lism have a lso diverged cruciall y, for the
methods of academi c radi cali sm have tended to emphas ize persistent,
inerti al relati onships, whil e the standa rds of sociopolitical radi calism
have stressed hitherto unsuspected conditi on s and agencies of revolu–
tion.
The histori cal reexamina ti on of slavery that has produced a
continuous flow of books and articl es extending the earli er work of the
fin e bl ack schol ars, whose ethni c interes t was obvi ously p aramount,
seems to begin with Kenneth Stampp 's
Pecul iar Institu tion
of 1956, a
scant two years after th e Supreme Court decision in
Brown vs. Board of
Educat ion
made the racia l probl em and its antecedents the most
prominent publi c issue in contempo ra ry Ameri can hfe. Tha t issue
provided not onl y incentive but a lso guidin g concepts for the hi stori cal
reconstructi on. The co incidenta l vogue of grass-roots hi stor y dignifi ed
materi als testifyin g to the a ttitudes of o rdin ary slaveholders and even of
slaves-materi a ls no t fo rmerl y sought out because they were thought
inappropri ate to seri ous hi sto ry. Thus the kind of social history th a t
had been dominated by the sel ective paterna li sti c sympa thi es of Ulri ch
Phillips has now been cruciall y suppl emented by the mo re egalitarian
inquiry into th e conditi ons and a ttitudes of less autho rita tive peopl e,
white and bl ack alike. There can be littl e doubt tha t the confluence of a
democra ti c politi cs and an hi sto ri ographi cal populi sm has led to th e
current plethora of bo th specia l studi es manifesting blac k sl avery's
infinite vari ety and genera l syntheses re-eva lu ating fundamenta l ques–
tions in the li ght of thi s new, interna li zed perspective.
Of the four books under rev iew here, Ira Berlin 's
S laves without
Masters
typifies the best in the genre of specia l studi es; the other three
are landmarks in the synopti c reassessment of black slavery and of the
antislavery movements. Each of th e books in thi s genre is a sequel to
prior studi es by the same autho rs in whi ch they first presented, in mo re
schematic form, the ana lyti cal structures they now appl y to the who le
