American History

Dr. Barbara Jeanne Fields on the Moral Foundations of Freedom

“Slavery and freedom are incommensurable qualities, the difference between them an existential matter touching the dignity and worth of human life. People suffer, certainly, in freedom as well as in slavery (and, for that matter, in every known condition of human existence). But that unquestionable truth does not license anyone to tote up the suffering of one–in dollars of gold,…

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American History, Historiography

The Way I See America

This is how I see America: Maritime, African, Indigenous, and European, with the Greater Caribbean at its heart (h/t to Elizabeth Eaton’s map of the Atlantic arc of colonial British America for bringing this thought to the forefront). Edit: the Google Earth version of the same perspective.