“[A] compelling work… With a solid historical foundation and careful curation, the book fosters a deep understanding of sacred law, national identity, religion, and race.”
–Toyin Falola, Jacob & Frances Sanger Mossiker Chair in the Humanities, University of Texas at Austin, USA
“[A] highly original analytical framework… Weller’s brilliant argument that sacred law was both a malleable instrument and a battleground for talking and tackling bondage brims with piercing novelty.”
–Moses E. Ochonu, Cornelius Vanderbilt Professor of History, Vanderbilt University, USA
“…brilliantly reveals the long-term American encounters with Jewish, Christian and Islamic slave law traditions… [A]n extraordinary work grounded in abundant primary source material… brings new light to the study of transatlantic and American slave history...”
–Patrick Manning, Emeritus Andrew Mellon Professor of World History, University of Pittsburgh, USA
This book engages the way Christian, Jewish, Muslim and secular-progressivist actors used Mosaic and Islamic law and ethics in relation to slavery in American, West African and transatlantic history from 1440 to 1830. It focuses on how various groups marshalled these religious-legal traditions to respond to questions of enslavement, amelioration, emancipation and abolition in the face of ever-transforming social, religious-cultural, legal and political contexts over several centuries. The study offers a vital corrective to secularized histories of slavery by showing that sacred law was not peripheral but ever-central to the making—and unmaking—of American slavery, with legacies that reverberate through Reconstruction, segregation and modern civil rights debates.
R. Charles Weller, Ph.D., is Associate Professor of History (Career), Washington State University, and Senior Research Fellow, Al-Farabi Kazakh National University. He has also been a visiting fellow at Yale University (2010-11), a visiting researcher at Georgetown University’s Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding (2014-19) and Affiliate (Research) Faculty of History at George Mason University (2021-22).
