The New History of American Slaveries

American slavery began long before Europeans arrived in the New World. Evidence from archaeology and oral tradition indicates that for hundreds, perhaps thousands, of years, Native Americans had developed their own forms of bondage. This should not be surprising since most societies in history have practiced slavery and kept a high proportion of the total global population unfree, according to archaeologist Catherine Cameron. If slavery is ubiquitous, however, it also takes on many distinct forms.

Christina Snyder, the McCabe Greer Professor of History at Penn State University, studies the intersections of colonialism, race and slavery, with a focus on North America from the pre-contact era through the 19th century. She is the author of Slavery in Indian Country: The Changing Face of Captivity in Early America (Harvard UP, 2010) and Great Crossings: Indians, Settlers, and Slaves in the Age of Jackson (Oxford UP, 2017), which won this year’s Francis Parkman Prize from the Society of American Historians.

Admission is free.