The Driver's Story - (Early American Studies) by Randy M Browne (Hardcover)

About the Book

"The story of the driver is the story of Atlantic slavery. Starting in the seventeenth-century Caribbean, enslavers developed the driving system to solve their fundamental problem: how to extract labor from captive workers who had every reason to resist. In this system, enslaved Black drivers were tasked with supervising and punishing other enslaved laborers. In The Driver's Story, Randy M. Browne illuminates the predicament and harrowing struggles of these men-and sometimes women-at the heart of the plantation world. What, Browne asks, did it mean to be trapped between the insatiable labor demands of white plantation authorities and the constant resistance of one's fellow enslaved laborers? In this insightful and unsettling account of slavery and racial capitalism, Browne shows that on plantations across the Americas, drivers were at the center of enslaved people's working lives, social relationships, and struggles against slavery. Drivers enforced labor discipline and confronted the resistance of their fellow enslaved laborers, aiming to maintain a position that helped them survive in a world where enslaved people were treated as disposable. Drivers also protected the people they supervised, negotiating workloads and customary rights to essentials like food and rest with white authorities. Within the slave community, drivers helped other enslaved people create a sense of belonging, as husbands and fathers, as Big Men, and as leaders of diasporic African "nations." Sometimes, drivers even organized rebellions, sabotaging the very system they were appointed to support. Compelling and original, The Driver's Story enriches our understanding of the never-ending war between enslavers and enslaved laborers by focusing on its front line. It also brings us face-to-face with the horror of capitalist labor exploitation. While critics attacked the driving system as barbaric and backwards, in pushing workers to their utter limits it was, in fact, fundamentally modern-a stark example of what historian Walter Rodney called capitalism without its loincloth"--

Book Synopsis

The story of the driver is the story of Atlantic slavery. Starting in the seventeenth-century Caribbean, enslavers developed the driving system to solve their fundamental problem: how to extract labor from captive workers who had every reason to resist. In this system, enslaved Black drivers were tasked with supervising and punishing other enslaved laborers. In The Driver's Story, Randy M. Browne illuminates the predicament and harrowing struggles of these men--and sometimes women--at the heart of the plantation world. What, Browne asks, did it mean to be trapped between the insatiable labor demands of white plantation authorities and the constant resistance of one's fellow enslaved laborers?

In this insightful and unsettling account of slavery and racial capitalism, Browne shows that on plantations across the Americas, drivers were at the center of enslaved people's working lives, social relationships, and struggles against slavery. Drivers enforced labor discipline and confronted the resistance of their fellow enslaved laborers, aiming to maintain a position that helped them survive in a world where enslaved people were treated as disposable. Drivers also protected the people they supervised, negotiating workloads and customary rights to essentials like food and rest with white authorities. Within the slave community, drivers helped other enslaved people create a sense of belonging, as husbands and fathers, as Big Men, and as leaders of diasporic African "nations." Sometimes, drivers even organized rebellions, sabotaging the very system they were appointed to support.

Compelling and original, The Driver's Story enriches our understanding of the never-ending war between enslavers and enslaved laborers by focusing on its front line. It also brings us face-to-face with the horror of capitalist labor exploitation.

Review Quotes

"An original and important contribution to the field. . . . The Driver's Story well deserves a place in the canon of exciting and innovative new studies of the history of slavery in the British Caribbean."-- "Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History"

"The greatest strength of The Driver's Story is the author's decoding of his dense source material to humanize his subjects and render their world intelligible. . . . [It] is an engaging and clearly written book that will be appreciated by specialists in his field yet is also accessible to graduate and advanced undergraduate students."-- "Hispanic American Historical Review"

"An innovative piece of scholarship that engages with classic themes within Atlantic slavery studies through a refreshing lens. . . . Highly stimulating to scholars and ideal for students, The Driver's Story deserves to be read by a wide audience."-- "TSEG - The Low Countries Journal of Social and Economic History"

"This thoughtful book reexamines one of the most vilified and caricatured figures in Atlantic slavery: the overseer, or what Browne calls "the driver." Drivers have come to symbolize the Atlantic slave regime's brutal tactics, namely whipping and sexual assault. However, lay readers may not know that most drivers were enslaved Black men...To produce this empathetic "human history," Browne expertly and painstakingly sifted through archival records found across the Atlantic World from Guyana to the UK."-- "Choice"

"Browne provides a nuanced, thought-provoking analysis of the complex roles played by enslaved drivers in the southern British Caribbean. By situating drivers at the intersection of plantation management, enslaved community leadership, and resistance, Browne illuminates their 'fundamental predicament' as both the enforcers and victims of the plantation regime. Browne's work thus offers a critical intervention that deepens our understanding of the entangled dynamics of power, resistance, and survival in Atlantic slavery."-- "The Americas"

"Browne's engaging study offers a nuanced and valuable contribution to the fields of labour history and histories of slavery...[His] examination of the drivers' position, their function, their social role, and efforts to build communities, as well as the violence and horrors they faced in these efforts, allows us to understand better the durability of the plantation system in the face of so much resistance and struggle. The Driver's Story enriches our understanding of the plantation regime and the complexity and nuances of enslaved labourers' struggles for survival."-- "Labor History Review"

"The Driver's Story is the first intensive study of the plantation slave driver, the Black head man of the fields with the agonizing dual role of maximizing the owner's harvest through any means possible, including torture, and being an enslaved person himself...Browne is to be commended for exploring one of slavery's most complex and even troubling stock characters. We may never understand why drivers made the choices they did, taking subversive action in some cases and remaining strategically silent in others. But this book lucidly and provocatively advances the discussion."-- "Los Angeles Review of Books"

"The Driver's Story is a critical contribution to scholarship on the nexus of race, power, and capitalism in the Atlantic world...[A]n achievement of archival research, close reading, and careful analysis, and a major contribution to the expanding historiography of racial capitalism."-- "H-Slavery"

"Browne's vital book does three things extremely well. It makes an important argument about the centrality of drivers to the functioning of plantation capitalism and the social and political lives of the enslaved. It offers a penetrating analysis of the existential predicament of people who became drivers. Finally, it presents a highly readable story about one of the most vexing topics in human history: oppressed oppressors. The Driver's Story will occupy a significant place in the historiography of slavery."-- "Vincent Brown, author of Tacky's Revolt: The Story of an Atlantic Slave War"

"In his impressive, deeply researched book, Randy M. Browne helps us to understand driving as a practice throughout Caribbean plantation slave societies, while grounding his analysis in specific lives and places. Drivers, Browne shows us, lived a 'nightmare' in which they were terrorized into terrorizing others, leading to deep damage to them even while they reaped some tangible material rewards. Browne's insights, particularly into the politics of drivers and the development of rebellions, will surely be influential in future scholarship."-- "Diana Paton, author of The Cultural Politics of Obeah: Religion, Colonialism and Modernity in the Caribbean World"

"This utterly captivating and unflinching book leads readers deep into the driver's challenging world. It provides an unusually close-up view of enslaved people's daily lives as they faced their enslavers and each other. Indispensable to anyone interested in slavery, colonialism, and racial capitalism."-- "Marjoleine Kars, author of Blood on the River: A Chronicle of Mutiny and Freedom on the Wild Coast"

About the Author

Randy M. Browne is Professor of History at Xavier University and author of Surviving Slavery in the British Caribbean, also available from the University of Pennsylvania Press.