Background
Drescher, Seymour was born on February 20, 1934 in New York City. Son of Sidney and Eva Rita (Levine) Drescher.
(In one form or another, slavery has existed throughout th...)
In one form or another, slavery has existed throughout the world for millennia. It helped to change the world, and the world transformed the institution. In the 1450s, when Europeans from the small corner of the globe least enmeshed in the institution first interacted with peoples of other continents, they created, in the Americas, the most dynamic, productive, and exploitative system of coerced labor in human history. Three centuries later these same intercontinental actions produced a movement that successfully challenged the institution at the peak of its dynamism. Within another century a new surge of European expansion constructed Old World empires under the banner of antislavery. However, twentieth-century Europe itself was inundated by a new system of slavery, larger and more deadly than its earlier system of New World slavery. This book examines these dramatic expansions and contractions of the institution of slavery and the impact of violence, economics, and civil society in the ebb and flow of slavery and antislavery during the last five centuries.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0521600855/?tag=2022091-20
(In this classic analysis and refutation of Eric Williams'...)
In this classic analysis and refutation of Eric Williams's 1944 thesis, Seymour Drescher argues that Britain's abolition of the slave trade in 1807 resulted not from the diminishing value of slavery for Great Britain but instead from the British public's mobilization against the slave trade, which forced London to commit what Drescher terms "econocide." This action, he argues, was detrimental to Britain's economic interests at a time when British slavery was actually at the height of its potential. Originally published in 1977, Drescher's work was instrumental in undermining the economic determinist interpretation of abolitionism that had dominated historical discourse for decades following World War II. For this second edition, which includes a foreword by David Brion Davis, Drescher has written a new preface, reflecting on the historiography of the British slave trade since this book's original publication.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0807871796/?tag=2022091-20
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00JI14Z0I/?tag=2022091-20
(The age of British abolitionism came into consolidated st...)
The age of British abolitionism came into consolidated strength in 1787-88 with the first mass campaign against the slave trade and ended just half a century later in 1838 with a mass petition movement against Negro Apprenticeship. Drescher focuses on this critical fifty-year period, when the people of the Empire effectively pressured and eventually altered national policy. Presenting a major reassessment of the roots, nature, and significance of Britain's successful struggle against slavery, he illuminates a novel turn in the history of antislavery, when for the first time, the most effective agents in the abolition process were non-slave masses, including working men and women. This not only set Britain off from ancient Rome, medieval western Europe, and early modern Russia, but, in scale and duration, it distinguished Britain from its 19th-century continental European counterparts as well. Viewing British abolitionism against the backdrop of larger national and international events, this provocative study challenges readers to look anew at the politics of slavery and social change in a prominent era of British history.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0195205340/?tag=2022091-20
( Alexis de Tocqueville has been extensively chronicled a...)
Alexis de Tocqueville has been extensively chronicled as a pioneer sociologist and political philosopher of democracy during the early nineteenth century. However, his writings on the problems of social and economic transitions to an industrial society have been largely overlooked. In this book, Seymour Drescher presents a thorough analysis of Tocqueville's concern for the lower classes of society, viewing his thoughts on slavery, poverty, criminality, and working class conditions, and their place in an evolving egalitarian society.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0822984040/?tag=2022091-20
(By the mid-eighteenth century, the transatlantic slave tr...)
By the mid-eighteenth century, the transatlantic slave trade was considered to be a necessary and stabilizing factor in the capitalist economies of Europe and the expanding Americas. Britain was the most influential power in this system which seemed to have the potential for unbounded growth. In 1833, the British empire became the first to liberate its slaves and then to become a driving force toward global emancipation. There has been endless debate over the reasons behind this decision. This has been portrayed on the one hand as a rational disinvestment in a foundering overseas system, and on the other as the most expensive per capita expenditure for colonial reform in modern history. In this work, Seymour Drescher argues that the plan to end British slavery, rather than being a timely escape from a failing system, was, on the contrary, the crucial element in the greatest humanitarian achievement of all time. The Mighty Experiment explores how politicians, colonial bureaucrats, pamphleteers, and scholars taking anti-slavery positions validated their claims through rational scientific arguments going beyond moral and polemical rhetoric, and how the infiltration of the social sciences into this political debate was designed to minimize agitation on both sides and provide common ground. Those at the inception of the social sciences, such as Adam Smith and Thomas Malthus, helped to develop these tools to create an argument that touched on issues of demography, racism, and political economy. By the time British emancipation became legislation, it was being treated as a massive social experiment, whose designs, many thought, had the potential to change the world. This study outlines the relationship of economic growth to moral issues in regard to slavery, and will appeal to scholars of British history, nineteenth century imperial history, the history of slavery, and those interested in the history of human rights. The Mighty Experiment was the winner of First Prize, Frederick Douglass Book Prize, Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0195176294/?tag=2022091-20
( In May 1888 the Brazilian parliament passed, and Prince...)
In May 1888 the Brazilian parliament passed, and Princess Isabel (acting for her father, Emperor Pedro II) signed, the lei aurea, or Golden Law, providing for the total abolition of slavery. Brazil thereby became the last “civilized nation” to part with slavery as a legal institution. The freeing of slaves in Brazil, as in other countries, may not have fulfilled all the hopes for improvement it engendered, but the final act of abolition is certainly one of the defining landmarks of Brazilian history. The articles presented here represent a broad scope of scholarly inquiry that covers developments across a wide canvas of Brazilian history and accentuates the importance of formal abolition as a watershed in that nation’s development.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0822308886/?tag=2022091-20
Drescher, Seymour was born on February 20, 1934 in New York City. Son of Sidney and Eva Rita (Levine) Drescher.
Bachelor, City College of New York, 1955; Master of Science, University of Wisconsin, 1956; Doctor of Philosophy, University of Wisconsin, 1960.
He initially focused his research on Tocqueville. He pioneered in attracting scholarly attention to Tocqueville"s views of problems of poverty, colonial slavery, and race. He was the first scholar to investigate the central role of England in Tocqueville"s political thought.
Of his work in this field, Tocqueville scholar, Matthew Mancini, author of a comprehensive survey of Tocqueville and American intellectuals (2006), calls Seymour Drescher "arguably the finest Tocqueville scholar writing in English.."
Drescher"s more recent historical studies have been primarily in the history of slavery and abolition in the Atlantic world.
One of his most dogged critics acknowledged the power of his argumentation (2002), comparing him in this respect to Adam Smith, author of the classic Wealth of Nations. According to Yale"s David Brion Davis, Drescher is "the historian who demolished the long-standing thesis that British abolitionists succeeded only because the slave colonies were in a state of irreversible decline." (2002)
Drescher"s most original contribution to the study of antislavery has been his attention to the role of petitions after the 1780s, petitions that served to rally working-class support for the antislavery movement.. Another important contribution made by Drescher to the study of abolition is his work in placing the British experience in comparative perspective, focusing on some different questions than do other scholars also making comparisons of slavery and antislavery.
.. In addition to his important work on British abolition.. he has written on two new questions arising from the present stage of black-Jewish relations in the United States, the role of the Jews in the transatlantic slave trade, and the comparative barbarism of two great moral evils, the slave trade and the Holocaust.. (Stanley L Engerman, 1999).
(In this classic analysis and refutation of Eric Williams'...)
(The age of British abolitionism came into consolidated st...)
( In May 1888 the Brazilian parliament passed, and Prince...)
(By the mid-eighteenth century, the transatlantic slave tr...)
( Alexis de Tocqueville has been extensively chronicled a...)
(The American Historical Review is the official publicatio...)
(In one form or another, slavery has existed throughout th...)
(Will be shipped from US. Used books may not include compa...)
Member American History Association, History Society, Society for French History Studies (vice president 1978-1979), North America Conference on British Studies, Dutch Royal Institute Linguistics and Anthropology, Fulbright Association, Commission Tocqueville (France), Academy Europaea.
Married Ruth Lieberman, June 19, 1955. Children: Michael, Jonathan, Karen.