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Challenging the Boundaries of Slavery. By David Brion Davis. The Nathan I. Muggins Lectures. (Cambridge, Mass., and London: Harvard University Press, 2003. Pp. [xii], 115. $18.95, ISBN 0-674-01182-1.)
David Brion Davis's most recent collection of essays stems from the Nathan I. Huggins Lectures he delivered in 2002. Not surprisingly, and in light of the consistently insightful and penetrating scholarship he has produced over the course of the last four decades, the material contained herein is at once familiar and invigorating. Few scholars equal Davis's breadth and depth of knowledge mastered during his long career. Indeed, few would fault Davis if he merely took the opportunity to retrace old ground in his lectures, but it is a hallmark of this distinguished historian that he continues to recast his material, engage new sources, and think out loud in productive fashion about the meaning of slavery in the western world.
The essays contained in this slim volume offer three discreet challenges to the way both professional historians and popular culture frame the history of slavery in early British North America and the United States. In the opening essay Davis challenges temporal and spatial conventions, as well...