Synopses & Reviews
Review
"Brilliantly bringing together Native American and Atlantic History,
Bonds of Alliance offers a nuanced analysis of shifting forms, meanings, and experiences of slavery. Rushforth draws on prodigious and wide-ranging research, using travel narratives, social history, and linguistic analysis to tell a rich and vivid story. A tremendous contribution to our understanding of the French Atlantic."--Laurent Dubois, Duke University
Review
"Avec
Bonds of Alliance, l'histoire de l'esclavage en Amerique ne sera plus jamais la meme. Porte par une ecriture puissante et par une epoustouflante erudition, l'ouvrage de Brett Rushforth montre que non seulement plusieurs systemes serviles ont coexiste sur le continent americain a l'epoque moderne mais aussi qu'ils operaient a des echelles et a des fins bien differentes que ce qu'a retenu l'historiographie."--Dominique Deslandres, Universite de Montreal
Review
"This pioneering approach to colonial North American history traces the traffic in Native American captives from the continental heartland into slavery in French Canada and on the sugar plantations of the Caribbean. . . . A highly original and strongly argued study that will force us to rethink the received wisdom on Native-French relations."--Allan Greer, McGill University
Review
"Rushforth imaginatively uses French and Native sources to illuminate a largely forgotten but vitally important chapter of the American encounter. . . . He never loses sight of the human stories, especially of enslaved Natives, which form the larger patterns he has found. A remarkable achievement."--James H. Merrell, Vassar College
Review
"A book that will spark debate, scholarship, and conversation for years to come. . . . A brilliant, bold, and remarkable journey into the Indian slave system of New France."
-American Historical Review
Synopsis
In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, French colonists and their Native allies participated in a slave trade that spanned half of North America, carrying thousands of Native Americans into bondage in the Great Lakes, Canada, and the Caribbean. In
Bonds of Alliance, Brett Rushforth reveals the dynamics of this system from its origins to the end of French colonial rule. Balancing a vast geographic and chronological scope with careful attention to the lives of enslaved individuals, this book gives voice to those who lived through the ordeal of slavery and, along the way, shaped French and Native societies.
About the Author
Brett Rushforth is associate professor of history at the College of William and Mary.