New Left Review I/25, May-June 1964
Herminio Martins
The Peculiar Institution
The Peculiar Institution. Kenneth M. Stampp. Eyre & Spottiswoode, 35s.
The reprinting of this book (first published in the usa in 1956) is no doubt due to the surge of Negro militancy in the usa. It is a readable, comprehensive survey of plantation slavery in the Old South. It discusses every major phase of life in the slave plantation: work-routines, life-chances, the techniques of slave management, the legal framework, markets, property and profit in the slave economy, etc. No other standard work deals in such a systematic and thorough fashion with all that impinged on the Negro slave; as such it has virtually no competitor.
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