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BOOK REVIEW                                CEDERBERG


more than thirty years overdue." Regrettably, when the original version was completed in 1940, the marked was not considered ripe for a sociologically oriented history of colonial and ante bellum slavery, and as a consequence, another promising doctoral dissertation was put on the shelf to gather dust.

It is no less a cause for regret, however, that a study so long overdue—and now so out of date—has been dusted off to appear on today's over-ripe market. The past three decades have been a time of extraordinary advance in our knowledge of the structure and functioning of slave systems before the Civil War. Few areas of American History have been so enriched with new and profound insights; and yet, of the nearly three hundred footnotes appearing in Moore's book, only five contained references to works published after 1940—and two of the five cited were authored by Moore himself.

Undoubtedly anticipating faultfinding of this sort, Moore sought to disarm criticism by serving notice in the preface: "Some recent sources have been cited, but since the recent writers have primarily used the same sources as were originally at my disposal, I have made no exhaustive attempt at updating." A claim such as this will not serve to answer the charge, however. Even if one were to ignore the proliferation of new data and the many avenues of investigation that have opened since 1940, it is obvious that the need for updating this work would not be ascertained by simply determining whether the revisionist writers of recent years had used the same sources in fashioning their points of view. The historiographical revolution that has taken place since Moore wrote his dissertation is only partly the result of fresh data having been uncovered; changes in methodology, in value assumption, in interpretive models, and even in racial theories have all played a part and would have to be taken into account in any adequate updating process.

Failure to keep abreast of newly emerging interpretations and developing controversies renders much of what the author has to say empty and inconsequential. His handling of such topics as the part played by imported prejudices in hustling Blacks down the road to slavery, the alleged infantilization of the slave personality, and the question of whether slavery was profitable proceed along lines that have long since been abandoned as interpretive dead-ends.

Errors abound that might have been corrected had the author done his home-work. At one point he attempts to build a case around the discredited notion of a vigorous triangular trade; at another he carries forward a discussion of the wording of the 1641 Massachusetts


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