Bonds of Alliance by Brett Rushforth

Bonds of Alliance by Brett Rushforth

In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, French colonists and their Native allies participated in a slave trade that spanned half of North America, carrying thousands of Native Americans into bondage in the Great Lakes, Canada, and the Caribbean. In Bonds of Alliance, Brett Rushforth reveals the dynamics of this system from its origins to the end of French colonial rule. Balancing a vast geographic and chronological scope with careful attention to the lives of enslaved individuals, this book gives voice to those who lived through the ordeal of slavery and, along the way, shaped French and Native societies. Rather than telling a simple story of colonial domination and Native victimisation, Rushforth argues that Indian slavery in New France emerged at the nexus of two very different forms of slavery: one indigenous to North America and the other rooted in the Atlantic world. The alliances that bound French and Natives together forced a centurylong negotiation over the nature of slavery and its place in early American society. Neither fully Indian nor entirely French, slavery in New France drew upon and transformed indigenous and Atlantic cultures in complex and surprising ways. Based on thousands of French and Algonquian-language manuscripts from Canada, France, the United States, and the Caribbean, Bonds of Alliance bridges the divide between continental and Atlantic approaches to early American history. By exploring unexpected connections between distant peoples and places, this book sheds new light on a wide range of subjects, including comparative slavery, intercultural diplomacy, colonial law, gender and sexuality, and the history of race.

Brett Rushforth is associate professor of history at the College of William and Mary.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780807835586
ISBN 10	0807835587
Title	Bonds of Alliance
Author	Brett Rushforth
Series	Published For The Omohundro Institute Of Early American History And Culture Williamsburg Virginia
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Hardback
Publisher	The University of North Carolina Press
Year published	2012-05-30
Number of pages	424
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.