2025/03/20 by Martin Ruef · 1 voice
Arts and Humanities · Social Sciences · #Historical and Contemporary Political Dynamics #Colonialism, slavery, and trade #American Constitutional Law and Politics
paper · doi:10.1080/01419870.2025.2479143
openalex publication_date 2025/03/20 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/06/15
Over the course of a distinguished career, Orlando Patterson has become the most prominent social scientist examining enslavement on a global scale. In this review essay, I consider the distinctive advantages offered by Patterson’s historiographic approach, which pairs large-N cross-cultural evidence with deeply contextualized studies of specific slave societies. Patterson’s innovative methodology differs from previous historiography on the institution of slavery, including revisionist history, ideal type comparisons, and analytic comparative history. Drawing on substantive examples from Enslavement: Past and Present, I suggest ways that Patterson’s contextual comparative perspective can improve our understanding of slavery and ethnoracial subordination throughout human history.