Publisher's Synopsis
Did emancipation improve the lot of slaves? They were no longer chattels. But was being a wage slave an improvement? This book brings together and compares the experience of slaves in the Caribbean, the Southern States and Latin America.;The contributors investigate the terms under which slaves worked and the ways in which they struggled both individually and collectively to establish informal contract terms for their labour in the Americas. They throw new light on labour subsistence levels, control of workplace material rewards and manumission. They also reconstruct the means slaves used to attain their ends.
