Book Review: The Driver’s Story: Labor and Power in the World of Atlantic Slavery by Randy M. Browne BrowneRandy M., The Driver’s Story: Labor and Power in the World of Atlantic Slavery. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2024. viii + 216 pp., map, illustrations, notes, index. ISBN 978-1-5128-2586-2, $39.95 (hbk).
Year: 2026
Type: book-review
Abstract: Browne's previous book, Surviving Slavery in the British Caribbean, contained an intriguing chapter on the drivers of the plantation. 1 The enslaved menand occasionally also womenwho drove the slave gangs to work form a group that is crucial to understanding the human drama and economic success of the Atlantic slave system.Expanding on the earlier chapter was clearly a great choice and an important step.In his new book, Browne illustrates important aspects of the practice of slave driving in British Atlantic colonies in the era of amelioration, roughly spanning from 1814 to 1834.Browne set himself the task of painting the predicaments, choices and struggles of the drivers in the plantation system.These drivers were, judged by their health, wealth and family life, far better off than the field hands on the plantations.The main argument of the bookthat the drivers were at the centre of the slaving systemis convincing and is clearly an important contribution to the labour history of Atlantic slavery.Styles of driving and the legitimacy of the drivers in the plantation were crucial components of slave life.When trying to understand a plantation or plantation society, scholars can no longer overlook the role of the drivers.The archival sources that Browne used for his first bookthe (nearly) firsthand accounts by enslaved people who took their complaints and cases to the protectors of slaves and fiscalsoffer a wealth of material to analyse the workings of the driving system.The sources and his use of the material is another great example of the way in which legal testimony, supplemented with planter accounts and missionary archives, can be used to answer questions about subaltern lives and specifically the social history of slavery.From the evidence collected by Browne, it becomes clear that drivers took on many prominent roles in the small village-size communities of the plantations.They were the managers of labour, but often also leading in religious matters and part of the adjudication of justice within the slave community.These roles were obviously blended together, and it might be hard to distinguish which came first.This meant that they were also interesting figures for missionaries who arrived in the Caribbean to spread 1.
Author: Karwan Fatah-Black
Institution: Leiden University
Language: English
Subfield: Anthropology
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W7166807740
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