The Slow Death of Slavery in Dutch New York

This book provides a new interpretation of slavery in Dutch New York, revealing its extent and the efforts to block emancipation. An important study that will appeal to scholars interested in slavery and, emancipation, and as well as legal, demographic, and economic history.

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Original and deeply researched, this book provides a new interpretation of Dutch American slavery which challenges many of the traditional assumptions about slavery in New York. With an emphasis on demography and economics, Michael J. Douma shows that slavery in eighteenth-century New York was mostly rural, heavily Dutch, and generally profitable through the cultivation of wheat. Slavery in Dutch New York ultimately died a political death in the nineteenth century, while resistance from enslaved persons, and a gradual turn against slavery in society and in the courts, encouraged its destruction. This important study will reshape the historiography of slavery in the American North.