Eric Foner's "Nothing but Freedom"

Paper Summary:

This paper discuses the calamitous failure of post-emancipation society in Haiti, the British Caribbean, West Indies, America, and eastern and southern Africa as revealed in Eric Foner's book "Nothing but Freedom". Foner theorizes that a cyclical dilemma is evident in these countries in which newly abolished freedmen are granted liberty and yet continue to struggle in their pursuit of a life of equality. The author relates that Foner believes that one of the many foundations of slavery in pre-nineteenth century emancipation is highlighted through slave plantation, which was the incubator of a highly stratified system of race relations and a unique Afro-American culture.

From the Paper:

"The Haitian revolution created only the second independent nation in the New World as it sent inspirational shock waves of hope throughout the surrounding slave societies of the Western Hemisphere. Toussaint L'Ouverture, a man of the French Enlightenment who envisioned independent Haiti as a multiracial society closely tied to revolutionary France, viewed the plantation as the key to the island's prosperity, and hoped to demonstrate that free men could produce the staple crops of the New World more efficiently than slaves."

More papers on Eric Foner's "Nothing but Freedom":

• Book Review # 105398 : "WWI in "Voices of Freedom"
• Book Review # 104075 : "Avi's "Nothing But The Truth"
• Analytical Essay # 143346 : "Nothing But: The Economics Of Intimate Life And K Strategy"

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