The Centrality of Slavery - (Early American Studies) by John Craig Hammond (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

How French and American colonizers created systems of enslavement in the Middle Mississippi Valley

The Centrality of Slavery examines how French and American colonizers used the powers of various imperial regimes to create slave societies in present-day Missouri and Illinois from the 1720s through the 1820s. The first book-length study of slavery and empire in both Illinois and Missouri, it begins with the origins of Native American and African American enslavement in the region. It then traces how successive French, Spanish, British, and American regimes shaped the development of slavery over the course of a century, examines the significance of the Northwest Ordinance's ban on slavery in Illinois, and then analyzes the diverging histories of slavery in Illinois and Missouri in the early 1800s. The book concludes with an analysis of the Missouri Crisis and the compromise of 1820, along with the Middle Mississippi Valley's significance in the road towards disunion and civil war in the late 1850s.

More broadly, The Centrality of Slavery argues that the Middle Mississippi Valley sat astride the crossroads of imperial North America. The practices of empire and enslavement forged and fought over there exerted an outsized influence on the history of slavery in North America and the United States. Rather than treating the region's eighteenth-century past as a prologue to the rise of the United States, John Craig Hammond analyzes the colonial history of the region on its own terms, through the European colonizers, American settlers, and enslaved people of Indigenous and African descent who shaped the development of slavery in the Middle Mississippi Valley.

Review Quotes

"John Craig Hammond has given us a much-needed single-volume history of empire, enslavement, and emancipation in what eventually became Illinois and Missouri. In a narrative that is, at turns, both sprawling and intimate, he reveals how and why two places connected by North America's greatest river diverged in the century leading up to the Missouri Crisis and demonstrates the enormous challenges the region's various imperial actors--the French, Spanish, British, and Americans--faced in implementing slavery and freedom on the ground. Imperial forces might have set the agenda, but the people of the region often had their own ideas and made ruling the middle Mississippi Valley no easy feat."-- "Anne Twitty, Stanford University"

"Readers of his important essays know that John Craig Hammond writes history that is notably broad yet always grounded. At the 'crossroads of imperial North America, ' he discerns a story of slavery's transformations that is imperial but no less contested for being more than sectional or national. Precise and eloquent, synthetic yet pointed and original, The Centrality of Slavery is a leading entry in the renaissance of scholarship on slavery and its politics that is reshaping early American studies."-- "David Waldstreicher, City University of New York"

"Through John Craig Hammond's indefatigable research and incisive analysis, The Centrality of Slavery offers sparkling contributions to a range of historiographies, headlined by those on slavery, politics, and empire. Hammond smartly deploys the Middle Mississippi Valley as his microcosm. That not only lays bare many of the long-growing roots of the Missouri Crises of 1819-1821, but also illuminates the multifarious and contentious interactions between imperialism and enslavement in the early modern world. Readers will be repaid handsomely for engaging with this complex narrative of the consequences of the choices debated and made by a broad cast of characters."-- "Matthew Mason, Brigham Young University"

About the Author

John Craig Hammond is Associate Professor of History at Penn State University, New Kensington.