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PARTISAN REVIEW
range of the current histori cal ev idence on black slavery. Genovese
published two preparatory volumes of experimenta l and interpretive
essays,
The Political Economy of Slavery
in 1965 and
Th e World the
Slaveholders Made
in 1969. Davis published in 1964 what he frankly
labelled an " introductory volume"
-The Problem of Slavery in West–
ern Culture-to
the actual history of antislavery movements that we
now have before us. And Roben Fogel first applied ma thematical
models and the quantification of data to history in the collection of
essays on the more limited and congenial subject of
Railroads and
American Economic Growth (1964 ).
By the criterion of method rather than of scope, the distinction
between genres runs a bit differently , since Berlin, Davis, and Genovese
master the new materials with traditional histori cal concepts and
procedures, while the work of Fogel and Engerman has unl eas hed an
intraprofessional storm because of the innovative, "e1 iometri c" con–
cepts and procedures they have adopted as appropriate to the new
material and because of some variant conclusions to which these
concepts and procedures have led. But, at least to an outsider, the
common insights into the historical nature of black slavery that come
out of the contemporary approaches to it overshadow the differences
that bulk so large to the participants in the discussion .
What there is of consensus in the present perspective on th e hi story
of black slavery stems from the institution 's position precisely at the
intersection of the concerns characteristic of the o ld and the new
history. Slavery was bo"th a sys tem of control and a definition of social
status. Consequently, the unifying press ures of political framework
and intellectual coherence remain as relevant to it as the newer
acknowledgement of diversity in what used to be depreca ted as mass–
man. Such an intermediate position does make slavery inev itably an
arena of confrontation for old and new historians, in contrast to the
uneasy toleration sometimes permitted by purer fi elds, such as unit
ideas and demography. But at the same time this propensity for using
the traditional bonds of political and intellectual authority to organize
the multiformity of social life enforces a common approach that limits
the scope of confrontation.
The reiterated demonstration of the complexity and heterogeneity
of the subject is an obvious mark of the new consensus in the history of
black slavery; but the growth of such awareness with the passage of
time characterizes the historiography of any subject. This emphasis on
complexity and heterogeneity, moreover, must be the expected conse–
quence of recent historians ' preferred approach to black slavery
through the differential identification and study from the inside out
