Featuring essays by historians and anthropologists, this volume focuses on the cultural dimensions of slavery in a wide variety of geographical and historical settings. The contributors examine the historical manifestations of slavery not only as legal, political, and economic institutions but as systems of human interaction and experience that are prone to conflicts and riddled with contradictions.

Among the geographic areas covered in this collection are colonial Louisiana, the American South of the antebellum and Reconstruction periods, Jamaica, the Danish West Indies, Suriname, and Africa's Gold Coast. Some of the essays deal with conceptual and theoretical problems of current slavery studies, while others present new research on neglected issues such as Native American slave-holding and the integration of former slaves into West African societies.

Still other essays probe the continuities of cultural processes across the historical threshold between slavery and freedom. Taken together, the comparative perspectives and interdisciplinary approaches offered by this volume make it an important addition to the increasingly sophisticated ways in which the social and ideological arrangements produced by slavery are understood.