From Slavery to Abolition in Peru: Four Recent Contributions

On the early use and origin of the term "obeah" in Barbados and the anglophone Caribbean.

Institution Shocks and the Dynamics of Wealth Distribution. Did the Abolition of U.S. Slavery Reduce Wealth Inequality?

Identifying the effect of economic institutions on the distribution of wealth and income is challenging because exogenous differences or changes in institutions rarely are observed. We investigate the effects of a particular “institution shock” -the 1865 abolition of slavery throughout the U.S. -on the distribution of material wealth. The IPUMS 1860 and 1870 US wealth censuses allow us to use a...

The Slave’s Cause: A History of Abolition

Given the volume of recent works produced on the anti-slavery movement of the 19th–century Atlantic world, it was time for someone to create a new synthesis. Manisha Sinha’s The Slave’s Cause is a synthetic work that traces the long trajectory of the anti-slavery movement in the United States and places it into an international context. It provides a catalogue of antislavery figures, organizati...

"A plan for the abolition of slavery": consistently with the interests of all parties concerned (London, 1828).

Child Bonded Labor

Bonded labor has been already widespread since ancient times and has flourished at various periods in most countries. Bonded labor is outlawed by the 1956 U.N. Supplementary Convention on the Abolition of Slavery, the Slave Trade, and Institutions and Practices Similar to Slavery, and most countries have passed their own ban. However, it is estimated that millions of people are still held in bo...