Smeltertown: Making and Remembering a Southwest Border Community, by Monica Perales

Smeltertown existed as a smelting industry company-community and border town in El Paso, Texas. Through her own familial connection to Smeltertown, Monica Perales “traces the formation, evolution, demise, and collective memory of one of the largest single-industry Mexican-American communities on Mexican-US side of the border.” Smeltertown, as a community, was was made up of several real and imagined social worlds that were constantly shaped by ASARCO. The community that was forged in Smeltertown served as a way of survival for its residents, allowing the influence from ASARCO to be lessened. Smeltertown tells the story of how its residents ordered their immediate socials. 

Perales begins Smeltertown by tracing the development of El Paso as a 

center of international commerce and immigration. Given its location, Perales asserts that El Paso almost had to serve as the location of a transnational mining and smelting company such as ASARCO. Copper and capital had transformed El Paso into an international center for railroad, mining, and smelting by the early 1900s. Political and business power brokers paved the way for the political economy of the city to foster ASARCO’s growth that would eventually establish a social and racial hierarchy within Smeltertown.

Smeltertown examines life in the barrio and the multilayered worlds created by the company and the residents against a backdrop of industrial capitalism and racial segregation. Perales “charts the contours of the web of overlapping and interwoven communities that existed in Smeltertown.” The author notes a great chasm that existed between the living conditions of the white managerial families and the families of the Mexican laborers. Also, Perales explains that the separateness extended to social places as well. The ice skating rink on the company cooling pond and the company-owned bowling alley were only used by whites living in Smeltertown. In reality, there were two company towns, one Anglo and one Mexican. 

Through jobs at the smelter Mexican men began to define themselves as a permanent class of employees. Becoming a smelter man usually began with living within the community of Smeltertown with various family members. These non-transient men would eventually gain stability through seniority. Ties to family and previous generations bound smelter men to Smeltertown and ASARCO, which Perales aptly demonstrates with her own familial and generational ties to the smelter. Hard work amid dangerous working conditions also defined life as a smelter man. Smeltertown probes these two intertwining historical processes, the creation of the Mexican-worker stereotype and the proletarianization of Mexican workers, and defines life as a smelter man.

If living on the U.S. side of a border town made Smeltertown residents American, Perales looks at how they also never left their Mexican culture and customs behind. The San Jose’ de Cristo Rey Catholic parish served as a place for Esmeltianos to reimagine what it meant to be racially and culturally Mexican in an American border town. The Catholic chapel on the hill became the locus of what it meant to Mexican in a border town. Through their sense of community and the Catholic parish, Esmeltianos retained many aspects of their Mexican culture: Spanish language, Mexican patriotism, Catholicism. “Blending elements of national and ethnic pride, shared language, and a common experience with Catholicism provided a foundation on which Esmeltianos reconfigured what it meant to be Mexican in a U.S. city.”

Thanks to the company-owned education system, Smeltertown residents were provided a space for students to become involved in an American world. Perales argues that young women blended an identity combining elements from both worlds, Mexican and American. The school offered young women social, cultural, and political spaces that permitted them to challenge gendered boundaries set by their immigrant parents.

Perales also traces the demise of Smeltertown beginning with El Paso resident’s growing concern over the smelter’s emissions and their effect on the border city. Combined with those concerns and deadly lead exposure, El Paso and ASARCO decided to raze Smeltertown and relocate inhabitants to other parts of the city. “The very industrial processes that had brought it life had destroyed Smeltertown.” 

Even as the image of Smeltertown changed from a source of city pride to a source of major embarrassment, Smeltertown residents defended ASARCO until the bitter end. The community that had bound so many residents together through generations, families, and friendships would be no more. However, Smeltertown’s memory lives on in the minds of its people and the Smeltertown and ASARCO reunions that are still held in El Paso. 

Building Suburbia and Crabgrass Frontier

Building Suburbia: Green Fields and Urban Growth, 1820-2000, by Dolores Hayden

Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States, by Kenneth T. Jackson

A foreign visitor to the United States might be intrigued by the different looks of the American landscape as compared to those of Europe, Asia, or South America. With their works, Kenneth T. Jackson and Dolores Hayden both shed clarity on the look of American tracts, malls, and highways with Crabgrass Frontier and Building Suburbia, respectively.

Kenneth T. Jackson writes Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States to answer the question: Why are American suburbs different from those in other countries? He investigates the dynamics of land use, process of city growth through history, and the ways in which Americans living in suburban areas have arranged their activities. Jackson attempts to discover the true meaning of ‘American Havens.’

Jackson looks at the adaptation of American suburbs from a place where low-income families lived, to the places where affluent Americans could afford a more luxurious lifestyle. Jackson most strongly argues that the trolley “had a greater impact on the American city between the Civil War and World War I” than any other invention. Stemming outward from the crowded business districts, trolley tracks opened up a vast suburban ring. Trolleys connected “an area triple the territory of the older walking city.” Along with the trolley, Jackson points to affordable housing as another reason for urbanization in American cities. With a quick trolley ride to urban housing areas, cheaper land than in cities, and the balloon-frame home construction method, American suburbs offered city dwellers a “safe and sanitary environment” that was preferable over city life.

After the trolley, Jackson points out that automobiles, along with higher quality roads and more abundant fuel, gave many city dwellers better access to suburban areas. “The automobile made it infinitely easier to commute in directions perpendicular to the trolley tracks.” In short, cities began to “come apart” from the center because of the better transportation offered by automobiles. Automobiles freed their owners to travel routes of their own choosing, to come and go wherever they pleased, all for a fraction of the cost of the trolley. 

An important aspect in the suburbanization of the United States is the American government’s policies used to socially control ethnic and racial minorities. One such control measure was the Federal Housing Administration (FHA). Along with lowering interest rates, lowering the amount of down payment, extending the repayment period for guaranteed mortgages, and establishing minimum standards for home construction, the FHA made home buying cheaper than renting. The consequence of this governmental action “was the fact that FHA programs hastened the decay of inner-city neighborhoods by stripping them” of their middle-class constituency. This led to what Jackson terms “ghettoization” of public housing in the United States.

As Crabgrass Frontier comes to a close, Jackson argues that the process of suburbanization “will slow over the next two decades and that a new kind of spatial equilibrium will result early in the next century” due to several constraints. The rising cost and availability of fluid fuels will make it harder for urban citizens to live in urban environments. Also, Jackson asserts that the cost of land will constrain “the continued proliferation of suburbia.” A third factor inhibiting deconcentration involves the cost of money. “It is not likely that Americans will ever again have access to home loans at below market rates.” Fourth, building technology has not kept up with the demand for housing construction. “The median price paid for a new home in the United States tripled between 1970 and 1982.” Finally, Jackson points to the changing structure of the American family as the last constraint to strangle the future of suburban growth.

As an American urban landscape historian and architect, Dolores Hayden wrote Building Suburbia to document the suburban history of the United States since 1820. Similarly to Jackson, Hayden’s aim is to explain why American tracts, malls, and highways look the way they do. Hayden argues that there is great conflict between those who seek home, nature, and community, and entrepreneurs who search for profits through the development of rural tracts. In addition, she traces the long trajectory of suburban expansion, and considers future building and planning in the United States.

Hayden elaborates on the conflict between urban dwellers and profit-making entrepreneurs by examining the seven changing patterns of suburbanization. Here, she first introduces the history of “borderlands.” In the beginning of suburbanization, farms were converted to houses. However, as a true borderland, Hayden posits that they existed more in literature than in reality. She also describes that “the most desirable attribute of the borderland, closeness to nature, was also its greatest vulnerability because of the pressure to develop land.” Borderlands were a constantly shifting line of demarcation that lay at the heart of suburbanization. Next, Hayden expounds upon the wealthy picturesque enclaves. Of particular interest is Hayden’s attention to Llewellyn Park, New Jersey. Llewellyn Park is a typical picturesque enclave, lacking straight lines and 90-degree turns, containing a series of distinct landscape experiences, and featuring world-class architecture. Clearly, picturesque enclaves were not meant to suburbanize the working-class man. Third, Hayden covers streetcar buildouts in the history of American urbanization. Streetcar buildouts “began as linear real estate developments along expanding transit lines.” Houses in streetcar buildouts “were usually on a modest scale.” Residents lived together in close proximity, grouped together with paid and unpaid workers, kin, and boarders. Following streetcar buildouts, Hayden moves on to mail-order and self-built suburbs. “After 1910, entrepreneurs encouraged people with automobiles to reside in even more remote areas than those transit had touched.” Alongside an increase in the size of urban regions, options for selling and constructing houses began to change. Sears, Roebuck and Co. pioneered the mail-order catalogue, and then moved on to the mail-order house. As other companies followed suit, mail-order houses were meant to appeal to do-it-yourself homeowners. Comparing the growing suburbs of the post-World War II era to sitcoms like Leave it to Beaver and Father Knows Best, Hayden reflects on the fifth pattern of suburban history:  “model houses on suburban streets.” These sitcom suburbs held families of similar age, race, and income and notoriously lacked public space and public services. Next Hayden moves on to edge nodes. In this type of suburban area jobs outnumber bedrooms. Edge nodes are known for their malls and office spaces. These types of suburbs evolve “from automotive building types rather than from the residential building types connected to picturesque enclaves,” and sitcom suburbs. Finally, the rural fringes of edge nodes have seen expansion that covers more square miles than previously categorized suburban areas. Hayden points out that this type of suburban development has led to the loss of farmland and timberland. Wildlife has been reduced and waste runoff has damaged rural lakes and streams. Along and within edge nodes pollution has proliferated. 

Ultimately, Hayden urges the United States to preserve its older suburbs rather than reinvent suburban architecture and housing development. “Suburbia is the hinge, the connection between past and future, between old inequalities and new possibilities.” In order to conserve land, water, and air, the United States must support environmentally sustainable development. Federal, local, and state governments should offset entrepreneurial actions involved in suburbanization. As the United States continues to grow exponentially, it is up to her citizens to learn from the lessons of suburbanization.

Both Crabgrass Frontier and Building Suburbia focus on the history of suburbanization. Jackson’s Crabgrass Frontier sets the stage for suburban history with a general detailing of suburban history, and Hayden’s Building Suburbia stands as an important foundational text in the history of American suburbanization.

Unbound Feet: A Social History of Chinese Women in San Francisco

Unbound Feet: A Social History of Chinese Women in San Francisco by Judy Yung

In Unbound Feet: A Social History of Chinese Women in San Francisco, Judy Yung narrates the story of the immigration of Chinese American women in San Francisco, their struggles to maintain their homes and raise their children, their ability to acculturate into a foreign way of life, and how these women were ultimately able to prosper in the United States. Unbound Feet is a multi-layered book, with Yung using her own family history as the starting place for her interest and research into the immigration of Chinese American women. Moreover, the title is a play on the Chinese practice of foot binding which “involved tightly wrapping the feet of young girls with bandages until the arches were broken, the toes permanently bent under toward the heel, and the whole foot compressed to a few inches in length.” The cultural practice of foot binding reinforced Chinese women’s secluded lives by making it difficult for them to walk, thus living a “bound life.” 

Yung takes foot binding and the bound lives it created from China to San Francisco by explaining how these women continued to live oppressed lives in America.  The first generation of immigrants lived especially bound lives because of the “patriarchal control in Chinatown and racism outside.” Chinese American women were wholly subordinate to Chinese men. Chinese women were never able to choose their own spouse, no right to divorce, and no right to remarry under any circumstance. If passage to America were made possible by marriage, the women were expected to stay home, manage the household, and raise the children. “As in China, Chinese women stayed close to home and appeared as little as possible in public.”  

The first generation of immigrants initially met racial and sexual discrimination upon entry and detainment at Angel Island. Pending investigations into their right to land, women like Mai Zhouyi were confined sometimes as long as forty days or more with poor food, no access to family outside Angel Island, and the constant threat of the separation of their families. Despite the hardships faced in Angel Island, Chinese American women who were allowed embarkation did not find streets made of gold. “Although women were still confined to the domestic sphere within the border of Chinatown, their contributions as homemakers, wage earners, and culture bearers made them indispensable partners to their husbands in their struggle for economic survival.” Many women were given opportunities to reshape gender roles at home and in their communities. Some Chinese American women began working outside the home, while it remained common for women to bring in income by sewing at home during the day. 

Yung also argues that the effects of the Great Depression were not felt as harshly on Chinese Americans as it was on other ethnic groups. Chinese women in San Francisco were accustomed to discrimination based on race, gender, and class. Their low position in the labor market allowed them to keep their jobs, even as Chinese men lost theirs. As usual, Chinese American women continued to take care of their homes and children, while many also financially assisted their husbands. It was not uncommon for Chinese American women to become the breadwinners during the Great Depression years. 

Yung maintains that throughout the World War II period Chinese women continued to face socioeconomic challenges, but also assisted in the war effort like many other American women. Rice Bowl parties were thrown across the United States to raise money and spread “propaganda for war relief in China.” Chinese American women were also known to hold receptions for Chinese dignitaries and war heroes as they travelled through San Francisco. Less than fifty years after Chinese women began immigrating to the United States, Chinese American women served their country in the military. Yung points out that for China and the United States, defeating their common enemy in World War II took the efforts of all Americans, and Chinese American women stood steadfast in their commitment to help.

Filled with images of Chinese women and their families, Unbound Feet brings these Chinese grandmothers to life. Their stories and testimonies endear them to today’s generation as women who struggled and conquered in the face of great hardship and trials. Unbound Feet is an outstanding contribution to the history of Chinese American women and their social experiences in the United. States. 

Rebels Rising and The Park and the People

Rebels Rising and The Park and the People

In Rebels Rising: Cities and the American Revolution, Benjamin L. Carp argues that city dwellers coalesced into civic communities, defined boundaries of their communities, and contended with the challenges inherent in social and political change to bring about a revolution. Their revolution would bring America into the Revolutionary War with Great Britain. Revolutionary mobilization contained new challenges to local authority and broader, also perhaps more significantly, challenges to imperial authority. Carp explains that this urban mobilization helped make the Revolution possible. The Park and the People: A History of Central Park by Roy Rosenzweig and Elizabeth Blackmar demonstrates the mobilization of a different sort: the mobilization to build one of the world’s most famous parks, Central Park in New York City. As America’s most important naturally landscaped park, Central Park is an urban space. With a comprehensive history of not only the park, but the people behind the park, Rosenzweig and Blackmar indicate the urban mobilization needed to begin construction of the park, and the mobilization still needed to maintain Central Park’s “democratic character.”

Carp’s main theme in Rebels Rising is that cities were crucial for successful mobilization. He examines a diverse sampling of cities throughout the thirteen colonies, detailing the mobilization of urban citizens in the five cities having a population of more than nine thousand: Boston, Newport, Charleston, New York City, and Philadelphia. Carp looks at each city individually as a case study on urban mobilization, but connects each together because of the political mobilization required to break ties with Britain.

Beginning with Boston, Carp explains the significance of the mobilization that took place there, especially because of Boston’s waterfront (harbor, wharves, and docks). Carp points to 1740 as a “decade of change,” and the beginning of citizen’s mobilization again Britain. The Sugar At altered restrictions and duties on rum and molasses and mandated more rigorous procedures for customs services. The Currency Act prohibited colonial issuance of money. The Stamp Act levied taxes on court documents, ship clearances, college degrees, and a variety of other legal documents. Combined into what Carp terms “The Stamp Act crisis,” urban Americans were particularly affected by these British interventions into American society. Next, the Townshend Acts extended the long arm of British control, levying duties on paper, lead, glass, and tea. Boston experienced numerous clashes over quartering of British troops and use of provincial funds. Finally, the Tea Act of 1773 brought Americans face-to-face in conflicts with the over-arching imperial policy. The Tea Act reaffirmed a tax on tea and gave significant advantages to the East India Company. The price of tea was lowered as a threat to force Americans into paying duties on imported goods. Boston patriots mobilized to protest the Tea Act by dumping tea into Boston’s harbor; this mobilization is now known as The Boston Tea Party.

Carp next examines the taverns of New York City to demonstrate another way urban citizens mobilized again imperial policy. As the center of political life in New York City, taverns and alcohol “inspired a disorderly disregard for hierarchy threatening civilized society.” What began as the use of taverns and sociability for political ends, morphed into tavern protests. Taverns became the perfect place for city dwellers to air grievances again Britain. Carp explains that tavern meetings in New York City were copied all along the eastern sideboard to rebel against Great Britain.

Carp delves into the religious environment of Newport, Rhode Island and attempts to show how Americans mobilized against Britain. While the wharves of Boston and the taverns of New York City were easier to politicize than houses of worship, residents might have used their beliefs to inspire political action. However, the argument never comes together for Carp. This section of the book is more interesting for the architectural history of Newport’s churches than the mobilization of citizens towards a Revolutionary end. Probably due in part to the plurality of religions and beliefs, citizens in Newport were chiefly concerned with the town’s commerce.

Charleston, South Carolina provides the perspective of city households in the wake of political mobilization against imperial authority. Using the household of Henry Laurens, Carp explains how elite gentlemen used a “sufficient exercise of power and a judicious management of political mobilization” to contribute to independence from Great Britain, but continue to hold the same political and social power as held before. Carp points out that Charleston women were at the heart of consumer mobilization. Their boycotts and spinning contests mobilized a section of society that is not usually given credit.

Finally, Carp wraps up his demonstration of revolutionary mobilization in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Philadelphian mobilization took place “out of doors,” or outside the normal legislative sessions. Their use of the State House and State House Yards were perfect locations for assemblies and protests to be held outdoors. Philadelphians “out of doors” displays of protests show how mobilization took place in the everyday lives of city dwellers. 

The Park and the People is not simply a history of Central Park; it is instead a history of the urban mobilization needed to construct the 843-acre park, the story of the people who built the park, and how the park relates to the city. New Yorkers mobilized not for a Revolutionary cause, but for a city park. 

The Park and the People begins with an assessment of the origins of the park. The authors spend a bit of time delving into the identity of the “gentleman” from Europe who first posited the idea of a great park in New York City. Rosenzweig and Blackmar credit the wealthy merchant Robert Minturn as being the anonymous gentleman, as he had recently returned from a tour of Europe. Urged on by his wife, Minturn called together a committee to lobby for a great public park.

For Rosenzweig and Blackmar, the creation of the park by co-designer Frederick Law Olmsted is a crucial piece of the Central Park puzzle. However, the authors also closely  focus on co-designer Calvert Vaux and the dynamic relationship between the two designers. While Olmsted is generally the recognized name in association with the vision of Central Park, Rosenzweig and Blackmar give a seeming biased account of Vaux’s contributions. 

An interesting aspect of The Park and the People is the author’s investigation of the meaning of “public park.” Beginning with the actual labor force who completed the grunt work of Central Park, Rosenzweig and Blackmar examine these laborers, their family make-up, and their use of the park upon completion. When the park was completed, it was abundantly evident that the majority of park-goers were members of the elite social class. From the parades and parade grounds to the carriage drives inside the park, the authors explain how elite New Yorkers were the most frequent users of Central Park.

Another important person examined in The Park and the People is that of Andrew Green. Head of the Central Park commission during parts of the 1860s, he later became city comptroller in the 1870s. Green was present for much of the beginnings of Central Park, from wrangling with Olmsted and Vaux for position as superintendent, to his guidance through the park’s downfall through the 1870s. 

While Rosenzweig and Blackmar spend an enormous amount of space on the creation and construction of the park, and on nineteenth-century Central Park issues, a relatively small amount of space is devoted to twentieth-century Central Park matters. 

Taken together, Rebels Rising and The Park and The People both show how urban citizens were able to mobilize toward a common cause. In the case of Rebels Rising, citizens mobilized again imperial restrictions toward independence. In The Park and the People, New Yorkers mobilized to create the greatest urban park in the world. Both books point out how urban citizens join together for a common urban cause. 

The Origins of the Urban Crisis, Saving the Neighboorhood, and From Rural South to Metropolitan Sunbelt

The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit by Thomas J. Surgrue

Saving the Neighborhood: Racially Restrictive Covenants, Law, and Social Norms, by Richard R. W. Brooks & Carol M. Rose

“From Rural South to Metropolitan Sunbelt: Creating a Cowboy Identity in the Shadow of Houston,” by Andrew C. Baker

In cities across America race has been a crucial line of demarcation. The Origins of the Urban Crisis and Saving the Neighborhood show how race transformed American cities, towns, and neighborhoods. “From Rural South to Metropolitan Sunbelt” demonstrates how racial prejudices lingered in Montgomery County, Texas, even after racial residential segregation and racially restrictive covenants were proscribed. 

The Origins of the Urban Crisis by Thomas J. Sugrue examines the deindustrialization of Detroit, Michigan as a result of commercial decline, disinvestment, property devaluation, job loss, and depopulation. As a perfect and detailed case study, Sugrue uses Detroit to explain the transformation of American cities as a result of three factors: flight of jobs, workplace discrimination, and racial residential segregation. Sugrue boldly argues that the origins of the urban crisis lay much earlier than social scientists have recognized and previously reported.

Deviating from established opinion, Sugrue provides evidence for his theory that the origins of the urban crisis, or the “Rusting of the Rust Belt,” began in the 1950s, not after the oil crisis of the 1970s or stagflation. Post-World War II Detroit experienced the widespread loss of entry-level manufacturing jobs, reduced workforces, new overtime requirements, and the relocation of American industrial plants.

Workplace discrimination hit African Americans particularly hard in Detroit. Glass ceilings existed in every industry for blacks and the existence of good-paying jobs for blacks were scarce, leaving many blacks to earn low wages. Blacks became trapped in Detroit’s worst housing, and in strictly segregated sections of the city. Through the use of racially restrictive covenants, Detroit’s white citizens, mortgage companies, banks, real estate brokers, and real estate agents played crucial roles in maintaining racial barriers that would perpetuate the marginalization of Detroit’s blacks. 

Sugrue maintains that deindustrialization occurred because of a systematic restructuring of the local economy, from which the city was never able to recover from. Experiencing recessions, demand for automobiles, small shifts in interest rates, and plant closures or relocations, Detroit also withstood “long-term and steady decline in manufacturing employment.” At the same time the population of Detroit increased.

This double-whammy of population increase and loss of manufacturing jobs resulted in some action from the city government. However, racial conflicts were downplayed and discussions of class structure were censored. City government solutions were never able to correct the underlying causes of Detroit’s economic woes. Racially restrictive covenants led to a shifting of Detroit’s racial borderlands. For elite and steadily-employed blacks, housing options were opened up, if the housing was located in still-segregated neighborhoods.

Detroit’s white citizens banded together to form grassroots groups to keep their neighborhoods racially segregated. Sugrue argues that violence practiced by whites was organized, widespread, and the largest grassroots movement in Detroit’s history. The effects of racial violence in Detroit were far-reaching and included: hardened definitions of white and black identities; limited housing opportunities for blacks, persistent housing segregation that stigmatized blacks; racial divisions; and a reinforcement of unequal race relations.

While Sugrue focused on an entire city and its economy, Brooks and Rose take a look at racially restrictive covenants in neighborhoods in the second book, Saving the Neighborhood. The authors also aim to examine the ways legal and social norms reinforce one another. 

White citizens began to experience uneasiness with the movement of blacks into their cities and neighborhoods. To combat this movement, white neighborhoods and communities developed restrictive covenants to restrict ownership or residency according to one’s race. “Racial covenants were a legal substitute for the more vigorous and potentially vicious informal means used” to restrict residential segregation. Despite the ruling in 1948 by Shelley v. Kraemer that outlawed racially restrictive covenants, white flight became the new means of segregation.

To provide a legal route to enforce residential segregation, whites resorted to racially restrictive covenants agreed upon by property owners themselves. These agreements were designed to “run with the land,” thus binding future purchasers into racial restrictions. Whites were able to avoid legal obstacles, even in the form of the Supreme Court of the United States, and continue to legally enforce racial covenants.

Brooks and Rose go on to detail the “ways that a white homeowner or prospective homeowner might have assessed the various options if she wished to live in a segregated residential community.” One method a white person could have used to limit and prohibit blacks from racial integration in neighborhoods was harassment. However, large-scale harassment was difficult for whites to accomplish without long-term neighborhood solidarity that was hard to come by. Nuisance laws and zoning restrictions were also available methods to control the racial make-up of neighborhoods. These two methods, however, proved to be impractical on a large scale.

White homeowners were then left with racial covenants to restrict the racial makeup of neighborhoods and cities. The people Brooks and Rose credit with the spread of racially restrictive covenants are norm entrepreneurs. Developers, brokers, and the FHA, instituted covenants as standard practice. Paradoxically, these norm entrepreneurs were faced against norm breakers who attempted to ameliorate the practice and effects of racial covenants. Norm breakers, including blacks thinking of integrating into white neighborhoods, civil rights lawyers, and political groups such as the NAACP, began to challenge racially restrictive covenants. 

While illegal in today’s world, racially restrictive covenants do still exist in many deeds, covenants, conditions and restrictions. Homeowners are still left with few options in handling their restrictive covenants. “The amendment process nonetheless can be arduous, often requiring some kind of supermajority along with legally acknowledged signatures of the participating members.” Seemingly the only way to deal with these lingering housing restrictions is to ignore them.

If The Origins of the Urban Crisis and Saving the Neighborhood define the history of an American crisis and racially restrictive covenants, “From Rural South to Metropolitan Sunbelt” demonstrates that no matter what laws have been passed or how many years have gone by, the effects of deindustrialization and racially restrictive covenants have had a lingering effect on American cities. 

Just as Detroit, Michigan experienced depopulation, deindustrialization, and white flight, Houston, Texas encountered a similar economic condition. Citizens fled to outlying Montgomery County not only to live an idealized Southern lifestyle, but also to avoid urban violence and integrated public space. Montgomery County, Texas is known for its annual “Go Texan” celebration. In the 1960s and 1970s, this celebration included a shootout and a reenactment of a lynching. Originally intended to exhibit the rural flair of Montgomery County as compared to metropolitan Houston, Texas, the Go Texan festival gave citizens an opportunity to display their Southern heritage. 

In a line that could have been directly copied from Sugrue’s, The Origin of the Urban Crisis, Baker writes, “In an era charged with social tension, when the city of Houston was rocked with racial conflict and perceived lawlessness and urban whites fled to the safety of the countryside, this small-town performance (Go Texan celebration) reinforced the belief that, at least on the city’s metropolitan fringe, law and order persisted.” The since-excluded lynching scene reinforced Southern racism and racial segregation. 

Unlike Detroit, Montgomery County has experienced continued economic growth and a steady stream of middle-class citizens looking for an escape from metropolitan life. Baker argues that even today, Montgomery County citizens are continuously attracted to “the county’s rural landscapes to those unwilling to live in a racially and culturally diverse global metropolis.”

Urban and Suburban History

Summary of the Journal of Urban History

Review: The Origins of the Urban Crisis, Saving the Neighborhood,  and "From Rural South to Metropolitan Sunbelt"

Review: Rebels Rising and The Park and the People

Review: Unbound Feet

Review: Building Suburbia and Crabgrass Frontier

Review: Smeltertown: Making and Remembering a Southwest Border Community

The Journal of Urban History

What was the vision of urban history when the journal was founded (take a look at the inaugural issue)?

Looking at recent issues, how has that vision both been realized and altered?

What newer themes do scholars of urban history address?

In the inaugural issue, Raymond A. Mohl of Florida Atlantic University wrote that the Journal of Urban History had been established to provide urban scholars with a forum for interpretation and new research. As a new area of study, the editors were willing to encourage any lines of study that might provide more information on urban history. The editors did not intend to restrict research by time period or location. Room is left to chart new avenues of historical research. 

Some of my favorite articles were actually written in the first volumes. “Tracing Those Who Left” was printed in the first issue, and outlined the problems researchers faced when attempting to follow or link people in the 1880 and 1900 census records. Genealogy research would have been a tremendous labor with no name indexes. Without exhaustive searches through each census manuscript looking for a certain individual, connections would have been slow and very few. Contrasted with today’s genealogy research, this particular article reminds me how fortunate we are to have technology and the ease in which we can now search through census manuscripts. 

Several of the earlier articles in the Journal of Urban History were written about the physical aspects of cities, but moved toward broader topics like art in cities, the carceral environment of cities, and reasons people from rural environments were attracted to cities. International topics are still found in the Journal and I think that in addition to their continued presence international authors should also be given space and perspective. 

Book Review: The Slave Trade: The Story of the Atlantic Slave Trade, 1440-1870

Book Review:
The Slave Trade: The Story of the Atlantic Slave Trade, 1440-1870

By: Jaycie Smith

February 2014
Dr. Bernadette Pruitt Sam Houston State University

Although slavery has existed in many forms since antiquity, the transatlantic slave  trade  is  perhaps  the  most  infamous.  Webster’s  dictionary  defines  “slave  trade”  as   “the  activity  or  business  of  buying  and  selling  slaves.”1 The scene Hugh Thomas outlines in the opening of The Slave Trade, adeptly describes the business of buying and selling slaves at the onset of the transatlantic slave trade. In addition, Thomas lays out the foundation of the transatlantic slave trade, how the trade expanded, what happened during the slave trade itself, and ultimately, he chronicles the abolition of slavery in Europe, and North and South America.

The first book, Green Sea of Darkness, details the origins of slavery throughout antiquity. Thomas posits and indeed, the textbook From Slavery to Freedom: A History of African Americans also maintains, slavery had existed in Africa since the earliest known days of the great continent.2 Slaves were noted as helping to build the great pyramids of Egypt and the hydraulic system of China. Even the ancient king of Babylon, Hammurabi, had laws on slavery.3 Aristotle also believed that human beings may be enslaved without injustice, because they are slaves by nature.4 Romans established the status of slave by law, distinguishing slaves from serfs.5 The difference between the two is interesting: serfs were agricultural  laborers  working  a  lord’s  estate,  while  slaves  were   objects, unable to make a will, bear witness, or make criminal charges.

Thomas persists to record the continuance of slavery. Throughout the Dark Ages and into the early Middle Ages, slavery prospered.6 The Middle Ages even saw slaves as highly prized objects.7 More bluntly, slaves were viewed as accessories.

Thomas also argues that religion was inherently linked with slavery. With the rise of Islam in Spain, a large ethnically diverse community of slaves appeared. Islam accepted slaves and slavery as routine human organization. Slaves became a priority. Some believed that through slavery Muslim slaves learned glory and blessings by being exposed to divine providence.8 Nevertheless, Spain had an insatiable thirst for slaves. There was a two- way commerce between merchants in Europe and Spanish Muslims of the Mediterranean over slaves and African products, in return for European treasures.9

In book 2, The Internationalization of the Trade, Thomas provides an explanation of the reason the African slave trade grew into the transatlantic slave trade. Along with the exploration of the African coast and the exploit of African peoples, several islands were discovered in the process. Madeira, Santiago, San Tome`, and the Canary Islands all became depots for slaves in the African slave trade. As well, these islands began producing sugar. For instance, in 1484, slaves were used on a large scale in the Canary Islands to produce sugar.10 Around seventy percent of all African slaves sent to the New World were destined to work in sugar.11

Europeans were in search of a shorter trade route to Asia. Little did the Europeans know, but an entire continent lay in the way of Asia. In 1442, Pope Eugenius gave Portugal exclusive rights over any African discoveries.12 Beginning with Henry the Navigator of Portugal, the coast of Africa was explored and exploited. Henry negotiated a deal with African leaders: Portugal would not steal slaves or anything else, but would barter for them.13 (However, on this same mission, 650 slaves were taken while they were sleeping.)14 With the discovery of Madeira and the subsequent cultivating of sugar, the Portuguese appetite for slaves only grew.15 Thus began the link between African slaves and sugar. To cultivate the sugar, African slaves were needed to work not only on Madeira, but also Elmina and the Canary Islands. Later, King Philip began a monopoly system of trade in slaves with the express purpose of making money.16 For these reasons Spain and Portugal were attracted to Africa.

Thomas lists two reasons why the Portuguese were the first Europeans to embark on slave-seeking journeys to Africa. First, Portugal was the closest country to Africa and not embroiled by war at the time.17 Secondly, the Portuguese had become extremely proficient at maritime expeditions.18 Not only could the Portuguese explore in a southern direction down the coast of West Africa, but they were able to turn around and sail against ocean currents and wind.19

Because of their involvement of the slave trade from the beginning, not surprisingly Portugal produced the most important slave merchant of the sixteenth century, Fernando Jimenez. His descendants were among the largest contractors in Africa, and eventually in Angola, where the majority of African slaves originated. Not to be left out, Spain also had many merchants of significance.20 These Europeans were interested in trading for gold, silver, pearls, mercury, olive oil, wine, saffron, and above all slaves.21 Accordingly, the Spanish Crown encouraged the slave trade by a decree in 1531 making loans on easy terms to settlers in Castile who wanted to found sugar mills.22 By the late sixteenth century, taking part in the African slave trade was the new fashion.23

Nearing the end of the fifteenth century, France was determined to conduct trade on the African continent. France began by pirating Portuguese ships on the high seas. Despite Portuguese complaints, France secured royal permission to plunder Portuguese ships in 1530.24 The first to carry out a triangular trade, the French went to Africa for gold. Later on, France became interested in slaving.25 France also traded with Africans for ivory and gum.26

The  Dutch  went  to  Africa  in  search  of  gold  and  ivory.  Like  the  French,  it  was not  until later that the Dutch were concerned with slaves. African traders coveted goods brought by the Dutch. Dutch goods were cheaper and of a better quality than the Africans were able to trade with other Europeans.27 Soon, the Dutch purchased Gorée, near Senegambia, as a deposit site for goods and slaves.28 The Dutch seem to have been better organizers than either the French of English. As Thomas puts it, the conversion of the Caribbean islands into an archipelago of sugar was a Dutch idea, although it was carried out by French and English merchants.29

Not to be left out, England saw the economic possibilities of Africa as well. In the beginning, the English entered African waters to trade in gold.30 On several occasions the English went to Africa to trade for goods. Instead of taking African as slaves, they would bring them back as showpieces. After the waters had been tested, John Hawkins went  to  Africa  in  search  of  slaves.  Thomas  quotes  him  as  saying,  “a  store  of  Negroes   might  easily  be  had  upon  the  coast  of  Guinea.”31 After securing the Africans, Hawkins sailed to Hispaniola to peddle his loot. Hawkins made several trips to Africa with the express intention to obtain African slaves. Unlike the Portuguese, Hawkins stole the Africans, often burning their towns.32 Indeed,  several  “groups”  sprang  up  from Britain to carry out slavery: The Royal Adventurers,33 the Royal Africa Company,34 and the Ten Percenters35. These groups traded in slaves, mostly with Caribbean islands, but they also began trips to Africa themselves.36

Book 3, Apogee, follows the transatlantic slave trade through its climax. At the turn of the sixteenth century,  expeditions  to  the  “New  World”  were  common.  This  new  world  also   came with its own slave population: Native Americans. Shortly after the discovery of the New World, sugar cane arrived on the scene. Native Americans were put to work as slaves on the sugar plantations in the Caribbean. However, Thomas explains that it was soon realized that the Native Americans were not cut out for labor on sugar plantations. First, they were overworked. A Native American slave could not keep pace with a stout African male slave. In addition, the Native Americans were susceptible to European diseases.37 In response to the shortage of labor, King Ferdinand 1st soon ordered African slaves to be taken to the New World.38

Africans  were  said  to  have  “a  natural  love  of  novelty”  and  took  part  in  the   exploitation of their own people.39 For instance, in 1518, Gorrevod, the emperor of Songhai, offered a gift of 1,700 slaves to another chief.40 A Portuguese captain, Fernão de Oliveira, who could be called one of the first abolitionists, writes of how slaves were given by African monarchs. These African monarchs would obtain their slaves by robbery or by waging unjust wars.41 The kings of Congo and Ndongo squabbled as to whom should be the main supplier of slaves to the Portuguese.42 More submissive, Diogo I of Congo had an agreement with Portugal that the settlers on the island of São Tomé would only trade in the realm of Congo, thus ensuring profits for himself.43 Clearly, Africans were not bystanders in the slave trade, but took an active and enterprising role.

In addition to being a major sugar supplier44, the prized Portuguese colony of Sao Tome, in the Gulf of Guinea, served as an essential entry point for African slaves in the 17th century.45 São  Tomé  was  the  first  to  employ  a  “seasoning”  of  African  slaves.  If   slaves were found to be sick, they would be kept on royal plantations until they could be shipped abroad at a later time.46 Although not a central player in the transatlantic slave trade, German captains sold slaves on São Tomé.

Beginning with the ways in which slaves would be acquired, book 4 details slave harbors and markets, and then the actual journey across the Atlantic Ocean known as the Middle Passage, or Maafa. In the interior of the great continent of Africa, there were several ways an African would be enslaved: 1) the result of war, 2) as punishment for crimes, however minor, 3) by kidnapping, or 4) because of poverty.47 Not all of the wars were just, but rather, some African monarchs would go to war with the specific intention of capturing other Africans to sell to European merchants. European traders were also known to lie in brush and ambush unsuspecting Africans citizens.48 Regardless of the way in which slaves were obtained, they would soon be taken to interior markets.49 This first exchange would result in the slave being tied up, sometimes to another or two Africans. Their arms would be tied behind their backs by twigs, canes and grass rope.50 The currency used to purchase Africans varied, but acceptable forms included anchors, brandy, gunpowder, guns, iron bars, cloths, gold and alcohol.51

African slaves were subsequently transported from interior slave markets to harbor markets on the coast of Africa. The slaves would be marched in groups of about one hundred, chained together, for sixty to eighty days. Covering about twenty miles a day, the slaves would spend seven to eight hours each day on the march.52 During this march, slaves could also be required to transport goods. Once at a harbor market, Africans would undergo examinations and be subjected to seasoning and branding. The usual time spent waiting to be shipped was five months. The shorter time spent waiting to be shipped correlated to a higher survival rate.53 Thus, the quicker slaves could be shipped the more money there was to be made.

Two hundred and fifty years ago, ships did not hold up to the Atlantic passage very long. Thomas expertly describes European slaving vessels, and even uses a depiction of one such vessel on the cover of The Slave Trade. European vessels in 1780 only lasted about ten years at an average of six trips to Africa.54 The crews were made up mostly of young men in their twenties who would obey the captain as if engaged in battle.55 To European traders, their human cargo was no different than any other consignment. As such, the conditions on board European ships were unimaginable. Generally, slaves were put on the ships nude or nearly nude. Mahommah Baquaqua states he and the other  captives  were  “thrust  into  the  hold  of  the  vessel  in  a  state  of  nudity.”56

European slavers were in the business of making money, not making Africans comfortable during Maafa. With profit in mind, as many slaves as would fit on the ship would be crammed together on slaving vessels. However, some slavers began to realize that they should take better care of their slaves on the voyage. In some cases and in the interest of the financiers, all possible care would be taken the preserve and subsist the slaves.57 On a journey that usually lasted at least 30 days, the slaves would spend most of their time in the holds.58 Certainly there were no facilities, but if the slaves were lucky there would be bilge places cut into the ship for relief of bodily functions. Many of the Africans were unused to traveling on any type of boat, much less a ship on the Atlantic Ocean. Sea-sickness would have plagued the Africans in great numbers. In addition, it was common that disease would rampage the passengers, Africans and crew alike. Many slaves did not survive the voyage. Of course, the European slavers would have to dispose of the bodies of those who did not survive the Middle Passage. As with other refuse, the bodies would have been thrown overboard and not thought of again. Thomas  cites  Herman  Melville  in  Moby  Dick,  “Sharks  ...  are   the invariable outriders of all slave ships crossing the Atlantic, systematically trotting alongside, to be handy in case a parcel is to be carried anywhere, or a dead slave to be decently  buried...”59

An especially sad occurrence in The Slave Trade was the description of a baby being born during the Middle Passage. Sadly, the mother did not survive the birth of the child. The crew of that particular ship gave the baby to other slaves, but the infant was not received because the Africans believed the illness to be infectious. The baby was then  left  in  the  sun  and  “in  the  agonies  of  death.”60 There is no doubt that this was a mild situation compared to the horrendous sufferings of others. Women would also be subject to rape and other horrors, inflicted by the crew during the Middle Passage.61

Weather played an important factor when crossing the Atlantic Ocean. The Atlantic hurricane season rages from August to September. Attempting the Middle Passage during these summer months would have been a gamble. The first three months of the year, January through March, were the calmest for sailing down the West African coast or crossing the Atlantic Ocean.62

Most European slaving vessels landed in the Caribbean Islands or sailed to Brazil. In the West Indies, slaves would be disembarked at a slave harbor such has Havana  Bay,  Cuba.  Although  every  port’s  “ceremony  of  arrival”  was  different,  slaves   would be assembled at an onshore camp. There, they would be fed, cleaned, and otherwise cared for, in such a way to make them appear healthy, despite the arduous journey of the Middle Passage. At times, slaves would be shaved and painted to give the appearance of good health. In Portugal, after the arrival of slaves, an official would be carried aboard for inspection of the cargo of Africans. Next, the slaves would be divided into lots and carefully examined. After taxes had been finalized, slaves would then be sold as the merchants who financed the expedition thought best.63 Especially in the West Indies, plantation owners would be the buyers.

Concentrating on abolition of the slave, Thomas uses book 5, Abolition, to explore the seemingly novel concept of abolition of the slave trade and slavery. While not attempting to end the slave trade, the greatest organizers of the trade did attempt to ameliorate the slave trade. In 1664, Lisbon passed a law to establish the amount of drinking water that should be carried on a slaving vessel. Another important regulation, especially in the years to come, was the ratio of slaves per ton of shipping. Henceforth, 2.5 to 3.5 slaves per ton could be carried on a slaving vessel. Indeed, while sounding better for the slave, bribery was common and officials did not pursue violators.64

Several people affiliated with religious groups called into question the slave trade and slavery. English Protestants attacked slavery in the late 17th century.65 The Church of Rome complained of the slave trade.66 Although slavery was in its infancy in the United States, doubts of the morality of the slave trade began. Dr. Benjamin Rush, a Presbyterian and personal friend to President John Adams, formed in Philadelphia the first society devoted to abolition.67 However, the morality of the slave trade and slavery were rarely the reason behind anti-slavery movements. British North America wanted to restrict the slave trade because they feared a large population of Africans.68 Rhode Island actually prohibited the import of slaves in the late 18th century because of that colony’s  fear  of  a great African population.69 Rhode  Islanders’  fear  may  have  been validated; in 1770, 80% of the population in the West Indies was that of slaves.70 One important abolitionist, Anthony Benezet, became the link between American and Great Britain on the subject of slavery and the slave trade.

After the Revolutionary War, the United States would again turn to the discussion of the slave trade and slavery. Led by Quakers, several states even accepted emancipation. Finally, Pennsylvania abolished slavery in 1780. Although the law only applied to future generations, several other states followed suit: Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, and New Jersey. Slavery itself would eventually be abolished, but not the slave trade or participation of slave merchants.71 Thomas brings up an interesting point with regard to American independence but the still present institution of slavery.  How  could  a  society  with  the  words  “all  men  are  created  equal”  continue  to   imprison certain others as slaves?

Northern Europe also examined the body of slavery and the slave trade. In London, the Committee for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade was founded in 1787. France noted this society and established their own, Société des Amis des Noirs.72 The idea of setting up a freedman colony in Nova Scotia or Sierra Leone was even considered.73 The fact that abolition of the slave trade or slavery was even on the table attests to the diligent work on the subject by notable abolitionists, including, Granville Sharp, Anthony Benezet, Thomas Clarkson, and William Wilberforce. The dedication these men showed in producing pamphlets, making speeches, and conducting research, is a true testament to their moral character and realization of the evils of the slave trade and slavery.

While the issue of slavery continued to be debated, Britain stepped forward and enacted the Dundas Amendment. While not abolishing slavery or the slave trade, this amendment, curiously, abolished slavery sometime in the future.74 Other European countries abolished the practice; Denmark in 179275 and France in 1794.76

Ultimately, a bill in favor of abolishing the slave trade passed in the United States. President Thomas Jefferson signed into effect the bill, which stated that on January 1, 1808, it would be illegal to introduce into the United States any person of any color as a slave. Also, any United States citizen was prohibited from equipping or financing any slave ship from any port in the United States. The question of treatment of freed slaves was left as an individual state issue.77

While the question of slavery was beginning to be answered, the African slave trade was still in full effect, as is shown in book 6, The Illegal Era. British abolitionists and politicians finally came to the conclusion that slavery would never end unless the slave trade itself was abolished. In this way, Britain became the international naval police of the African Coast and the Atlantic Ocean. This naval patrol roamed the coast of West Africa looking for slaving vessels. Depending on the nationality of a suspected slaving vessel, the English would board the vessel looking for slaving equipment. If slaves were found aboard, the English would take them to established English ports and release them. The contents of the detained slaving vessel would either be sold or burned.78 Eventually, American and French vessels would join the English naval squadron.

In the United States, the question of slavery continued to be disputed. As late as 1837, men such as John Quincy Adams were labeled  as  “fanatic”  for  simply speaking of abolition.79 The southern United States had been built on the back of African-American slaves, just like as happened on the sugar plantations in Cuba and Brazil. An institution so engrained in these societies and their ways of life would not be abolished overnight. Thomas asserts that abolishing the trade in earnest did not come until 1840 when Captain Joseph Denman began landing sailors at Spanish slave stations on the West African Coast. Captain Denman freed slaves who were awaiting embarkation and burned the barracoons used to house them. In this way, slave merchants were not able to replenish their numbers of slaves immediately. Soon after, other captains followed Captain  Denman’s  lead.80
Despite the mainly English naval squadron, the slave trade on the West African coast seemed only to grow.81 In  1848,  England’s  House  of  Commons  created  a  
committee to determine the best way of ending the slave trade. After many witness interviews, it was decided that there was no hope of stopping the slave trade. 

Thomas gives an important reason the slave trade was so large: European desire for sugar.82 There was, too, a belief in Great Britain that the slave trade should be dealt with before the issue of slavery. Slavery raised the idea of property, which was a harder issue to resolve than the actual slave trade itself.83 This beckons the age-old question, which came first: the chicken or the egg? Except in the nineteenth century, the question regarding slavery would be posed, which came first: slavery or the slave trade?

Decisively, in 1850, Brazil abolished the slave trade. From that point on, Brazilian slave vessels would be open to seizure, importing any slaves into Brazil would be considered piracy, all captured slaving vessels would be sold, and the proceeds would be split between captors and informants.84 The African-American slave trade was in its last days as Cuba remained the only entity open to legal international slaving.

Even with the major players of Brazil and the United States out of the slave trade itself, Cuba continued to engage in the trade and even prospered. As the only place where slaves could be legally disembarked, Cuba saw 200,000 slaves brought into its harbors between 1840 and 1860.85 However as Thomas points out, the slave trade and slavery began to decline on the island. Slave revolts were numerous, and European plantation owners feared insurrection.86 In 1859, United States President James Buchanan took two decisive steps to counter the continued slave trade. First, he sent extra naval squadrons to the coast of Africa and moved the headquarters of the American naval patrol to Angola, in the middle of the slave trade. By doing this, he bolstered the European naval patrol in the area, and was able to be front and center of the slaving area. Second, he sent squadrons to patrol the coast of Cuba. This last move enabled naval patrols to more closely monitor the slaving activities of Cuba.87 Despite these efforts to control the trade, United States naval vessels were recalled at the start of the American Civil War. The vessels were needed for war duty and could not be spared; even to patrol the slave trade. Finally, with the 13th amendment, slavery itself was abolished in the United States.88

At this point, the remaining actors in the slave trade were Cuba and her Spanish benefactors. Spain, at long last, passed a bill for the suppression and punishment of the slave trade in 1866. Later, Portugal abolished slavery in 1869.89 The mainstay of naval commerce for three centuries finally came to a quiet end.

With The Slave Trade, Thomas attempted to answer the question: Why slavery in the first place? He lists two beliefs as the basis of slavery with respect to the early Middle Ages: captive slaves owed their fate to the sins of their supposed ancestor Ham; and if a people did not have laws and did not live peacefully under a government, they were more beasts than human, thus deserving of their enslavement.90 Although providing answers to the question of slavery, Thomas missed another important reason: racism. Black slaves were not the only captives made slaves prior to 100 B.C.: found in Rome, were fair Germans, including Saxons from Northern Europe.91 However, after the fall of Rome and on into 19th century North and South America, black-skinned people made up the overwhelming majority of slaves. Even after slavery ended in Northern Europe, it persisted in the Muslim and Mediterranean worlds, but mostly only then, in the slavery of African peoples, i.e. those with dark skin. As stated earlier, Europeans belief that African slaves were accessories only proves that Africans were thought of as subordinate. Already, white Europeans considered black African slaves inferior beasts. This trend carried over into the United States and flourished with the development of sugar and cotton plantations. Thomas errs when he makes no mention of the belief that Africans were seen as inferior as a reason behind the development, and expansion, and lasting impact of slavery. Nonetheless, racism grew and flowered along with slavery.92

Thomas next asserts the reason sugar became such a valued commodity to Europeans. The usual explanation given for the increased demand in sugar is that people in Britain, Holland, and France wanted sugar in their coffee, tea, and chocolate.93 However, Thomas blames the increased demand for sugar on the poor people  of  Europe.  He  even  goes  so  far  as  to  cite  a  report  from  1961  declaring,  “The   large increase in consumption that takes place in low income countries as soon as personal  income  rises”  resulting  in  sugar  being  “craved  because  it  adds  taste,  variety and attractiveness.”94 This conclusion is erroneous. The lower class citizens of Europe did not have such a great increase in personal assets during this time period to buy vast quantities of sugar. Certainly, the lower class would not have been able to purchase quantities of sugar that would have an effect on the transatlantic slave trade. It was the wealthy, the remote plantation owners, who traded sugar for African slaves as a commodity, thus making sugar the exploit crop that it was, not because poor English wanted it. Later on, Thomas freely asserts that the poor of Spain did not need to be worried about purchasing sugar, only the aristocrats needed be thought of.95

The Middle Passage is one  of  man  kind’s  darkest  days,  comparable  to  the   European Holocaust in the 20th century. The cruelty European traders carried out is unbelievable. Even more, the cruelty African slaves endured is even more unbelievable. As  Thomas  indicates  in  his  “Reflection,”  there  is  little  literature  from  the  Africans  who   survived the Middle Passage or slavery. Despite this fact, there is literature available, and enough exists that Thomas could have incorporated more survivors’  stories.   Thomas briefly mentions Equiano a few times in The Slave Trade, and mentions a few others in the appendixes. Still, more of these narratives could have been added to increase the apathy towards the African plight, instead of merely being mentioned in an appendix.

Thomas should have also taken into account that many readers of The Slave Trade were not going to be fluent in English and French. Many times, Thomas provides French quotes but with no translation. Without a translation, the impact of the words spoken is completely lost.
The Slave Trade, is a balanced account of the African-American slave trade that spanned over three centuries. An informed authority on Spain, The Slave Trade is one of several books Hugh Thomas has written centering, at least in part, on Spain. Born in the English empire but fascinated with Spanish history, Thomas detours from his usual topic of Spain to write the massive chronology of the transatlantic slave trade.96 While Spain played an integral role early on in the transatlantic slave trade, by the 17th century, and more so into the 18th century, their dominance was quickly fading to the British, although Spain would be one of the last to fully abolish slavery and the slave trade. The Slave Trade represents this detour from the major body of his work by not concentrating solely on Spain or their declining involvement in the transatlantic slave trade. Other books by Thomas include The Spanish Civil War, Cuba: The Pursuit of Freedom, and Conquest: Montezuma, Cortes` and the Fall of Old Mexico. For a more in depth look at slavery in the Western World specifically, one should refer to Inhuman Bondage by David Brion Davis.97

1 Merriam-Webster’s  Collegiate  Dictionary. 11th ed. Springfield, MA: Merriam-Webster, 2003, Accessed May 8, 2014. URL>http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/slave+trade?show=0&t=1399578099<URL.
2 John Hope Franklin and Evelyn Books Higginbotham. From Freedom to Slavery: A History of African Americans .Edited. New York: Oxford University Press, 1966, p. 9.
3 Hugh Thomas. The Slave Trade: The Story of the Atlantic Slave Trade: 1440-1870 (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1997), 25.
4 Malcolm  Heath.  “Aristotle  on  Natural  Slavery.”  Phronesis 53, no. 3 (2008).
5 Thomas, The Slave Trade, 29.
6 Ibid., 32.
7 Ibid., 34.
8 Ibid., 37.
9 Ibid., 38.
10 Ibid., 77.
11 James  Walvin,  “The  Slave  Trade:  The  History  of  the  Atlantic  Slave  Trade  1440-1870  by  Hugh  Thomas,”  Research in African Literatures 29, no. 4 (1998): 186.
12 Thomas, The Slave Trade, 64. 
13 Ibid., 68.
14 Ibid., 69.
15 Ibid., 70.
16 Ibid., 139.
17 Ibid., 56.
18 Ibid., 57.
19 Franklin and Higginbotham, From Slavery to Freedom, 23.
20 Thomas, The Slave Trade, 117. 
21 Ibid., 118.
22 Ibid., 115.
23 Ibid., 119.
24 Ibid., 153. 
25 Ibid., 154. 
26 Ibid., 173.
27 Ibid., 160. 
28 Ibid., 161. 
29 Ibid., 188. 
30 Ibid., 154.
31 Ibid., 155. 
32 Ibid., 157. 
33 Ibid., 198. 
34 Ibid., 201. 
35 Ibid., 205. 
36 Ibid., 207.
37 Ibid., 92. 
38 Ibid., 95. 
39 Ibid., 159. 
40 Ibid., 114.
41 Ibid., 126.
42 Ibid., 131.
43 Ibid., 128.
44 Ibid., 129.
45 Ibid., 169.
46 John  L.  Vogt,  “The  Early  Sao  Tome-Principe Slave Trade With Mina, 1500-1540.” The International Journal of African Historical Studies. 6, no. 3, (1973): 452.
47 Thomas, The Slave Trade, 370-371.
48 Ibid., 364.
49 Ibid., 381.
50 Ibid., 363.
51 Ibid., 318-319. 
52 Ibid., 383-384. 
53 Ibid., 406.
54 Ibid., 305.
55 Ibid., 306-307.
56 Mahommah G. Baquaqua, Biography of Mahommah G. Baquaqua, a Native of Zoogoo, in the Interior of Africa, 1st ed. (Academic Affairs Library, UNC-CH, 2001; University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill: Apex Data Services, Inc., 2001). 42.
57 Thomas, The Slave Trade, 418.
58 Ibid., 411.
59 Herman Melville, Moby Dick. New York: Penguin Group, 1955, 287. 
60 Thomas, The Slave Trade, 418.
61 Ibid., 418.
62 Ibid., 393.
63 Ibid., 432-433. 
64 Ibid., 457.
65 Ibid., 454.
66 Ibid., 456.
67 Ibid., 472.
68 Ibid., 461. 
69 Ibid., 463. 
70 Ibid., 479. 
71 Ibid., 482. 
72 Ibid., 493.
73 Ibid., 497.
74 Ibid., 582.
75 Ibid., 526. 
76 Ibid., 523. 
77 Ibid., 552.
78 Ibid., 593. 
79 Ibid., 660. 
80 Ibid., 670. 
81 Ibid., 733.
82 Ibid., 737.
83 Ibid., 735. 
84 Ibid., 743. 
85 Ibid., 747.
86 Ibid., 765.
87 Ibid., 774. 
88 Ibid., 776.
89 Ibid., 783. 
90 Ibid., 23. 
91 Ibid., 27.
92 Francis  Couvares,  et.  al.  “Patterns  and  Perspectives.”  In  Interpretations of American History. Boston: 2009. p. 101.93 Thomas, The Slave Trade, 189.94 Ibid., 190.
95 Ibid., 266.
96 Hugh Thomas, Interview by Mel Cooper, personal interview, 2011, unknown place, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2gGc4qCbCQ0.97 David Brion Davis, Inhuman Bondage: The Rise and Fall of Slavery in the New World New York: Oxford University Press., 2006.

Bibliography

Oral Histories and Interviews

Hugh Thomas, Interview by Mel Cooper, personal interview, 2011, unknown place, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2gGc4qCbCQ0.

Scholarly Books, Book Reviews, and Scholarly Periodicals

Couvares, Francis G. ed., “Patterns and Perspectives” Interpretations of American History. Boston: 2009. 

Davis, David Brion. Inhuman Bondage: The Rise and Fall of Slavery in the New World New York: Oxford University Press, 2006.

Franklin, John Hope and Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham. From Freedom to Slavery: A History of African Americans. New York: Oxford University Press, 1966.

Heath,  Malcolm.  “Aristotle  on  Natural  Slavery.”  Phronesis 53, no. 3 (2008): 243-270. doi: 10.1163/156852808X307070.

Melville, Herman. Moby Dick. New York: Penguin Group, 1955.

Thomas, Hugh. The Slave Trade: The Story of the Atlantic Slave Trade: 1440-1870 New York: Simon & Schuster, 1997.

Vogt,  John  L.  “The  Early  Sao  Tome-Principe Slave Trade with Mina, 1500-1540.” The International Journal of African Historical Studies. 6, no. 3, (1973): 452, accessed February 16, 2014,
doi: 10.2307/216611.

Walvin,  James.  “The  Slave  Trade:  The  History  of  the  Atlantic  Slave  Trade  1440-1870  by  Hugh  Thomas,”   Research in African Literatures 29, no. 4 (1998): 186.

Reference Works and Digital Sites

Baquaqua, Mahommah G. Biography of Mahommah G. Baquaqua, a Native of Zoogoo, in the Interior of Africa, 1st ed. Detroit: Geo. E. Pomeroy & Co., 1854. From Documenting the American South: Primary Sources for the Study of Southern History, Literature, and Culture. University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Library, last modified May 7, 2014. http://docsouth.unc.edu/neh/baquaqua/menu.html.

Merriam-Webster’s  Collegiate  Dictionary.  11th ed. Springfield, MA: Merriam-Webster, 2003.