Elizabeth Swanson, James Brewer Stewart, eds.. Human Bondage and Abolition: New Histories of Past and Present Slaveries. Slaveries since Emancipation Series. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018. 376 pp. $99.95, cloth, ISBN 978-1-107-18662-0. Reviewed by Andrew J. Kettler Published on H-Empire (January, 2019) Commissioned by Gemma Masson (University of Birmingham) Human Bondage and Abolition, a recent edi‐ forced to contend with mercurial terminology to tion in the Slaveries since Emancipation series walk a fne line between concluding that using from Cambridge University Press, considers history occludes modern abolitionist movements whether comparisons between past slavery and and contending that the use of history can assist current systems of slavery obscure or illuminate with modern abolitionism. To clarify this debate, the goals of anti-slavery in the contemporary the editors apply Joseph Miller’s broad gerund of world. The editors, Elizabeth Swanson and James “slaving” as a way to draw comparisons between Brewer Stewart, have collected essays that expose abolitionist movements against chattel slavery different aspects of this often troubling compari‐ and current goals against human trafficking. son. The work begins with an important preface David Richardson starts the frst section with from David Blight that uses the fgures of French a secondary introduction that counters the gener‐ historian Marc Bloch and Nigerian-born writer al assessment that there is little comparable be‐ Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie to discuss the impor‐ tween modern and chattel slavery. He examines tance of using forms of history for activist goals. diverse histories of slavery to show how past ac‐ The editors follow with a lengthy introduction to counts can educate activists to challenge illegal the three sections of their volume. Their synopsis forms of current slaving. Richardson exposes nu‐ presents current tactics of the anti-slavery move‐ merous case studies from the modern world, ment that hope to free the over forty-six million pointing to questions of the different historical contemporary slaves estimated by the Global Slav‐ scales of slavery, the diverse geographies of slav‐ ery Index of 2016. ery, and the excessive cruelty of human traffick‐ In their introduction, Swanson and Stewart ing. To continue the frst section, James Sidbury argue that modern slavery has nearly nothing in offers a historiographical foray into questions of common with the chattel slavery that dominated civic death. Exploring methods of control applied the Atlantic World. However, despite the lack of by slaveholders and modern traffickers alike, Sid‐ mutual practices, the manner in which past bury uses exploitation as a key term for discover‐ slaveries were defeated can often inform modern ing similarities between social death in chattel movements. Even with this open activist space, slavery and the regulation over bodies and minds the editors note that their authors are frequently within modern slaveries. Consequently, Sidbury H-Net Reviews presents an important discussion of the blurred explores the modern idea of shanghaiing, or mar‐ lines between slavery and freedom that existed itime kidnapping, for labor on the high seas. within chattel systems and in the modern world, Anne Ma Duane continues the second section even as many activists disengage the use of past on everyday practice with her comparison of slavery because of the memory of a falsely singu‐ childhood enslavement within American slavery, lar antebellum plantation paradigm. The follow‐ through a reading of Frederick Douglass, to mod‐ ing chapter from Allison Mileo Gorsuch engages ern issues of childhood slavery, sex trafficking, legal questions of anti-slavery in the nineteenth and citizenship. The terms of profitability offer century to conclude that modern movements Duane a way to clarify how child slavery existed must enforce existing laws. Gorsuch then probes within historical settings and continues to ex‐ the case of United States v. Kozminski (1988), the pand. Jessica Pliley follows with an analysis on Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000, and the rhetoric of sex trafficking in the modern United States v. Kaufman (2008) to clarify legal world. Exposing a debate between anti-sex traf‐ terminology while concluding that anti-slavery ficking activists and their opponents, Pliley looks activists should avoid using comparisons to past at a history of engagements against white slavery slaveries in favor of developing precedent that in the West. Examining a common trajectory from more correctly defines present human trafficking exposure to reform, Pliley judges the modern anti- and labor exploitation. trafficking movement as still buying into much- Following the editors’ aspiration to look into too-vague language that frequently limits female the everyday practices of past and present slaver‐ agency. ies, John Donoghue begins the second section by The fnal section looks at how history is exploring the forms of kidnapping that took la‐ rhetorically applied within modern anti-slavery borers into the Atlantic World while showing how movements. Dave Blair compares the British cam‐ those patterns are similar to modern slaving. paigns against foreign slave traders in the nine‐ Specifically highlighting the importance of traf‐ teenth century to modern transnational efforts to ficking networks, Donoghue locates the kidnap‐ limit illegal trading throughout the developing pers, or spirits, who took countless bodies from world. Exploring individual efforts within the European ports into the Atlantic World, portray‐ West Africa Squadron, Blair highlights the impor‐ ing that labor acquisition was never fully legal. tance of human agency to lead efforts to combat This chapter highlights the organized crime syndi‐ modern cyberspace trading of slaves as compared cates that spirited away laborers in the past to the webbed networks of the Atlantic World. through comparisons to the spiriting away of con‐ The penultimate chapter, from the editors, ex‐ tract laborers into the horrific bondages of the plores a discussion of human rights within aboli‐ modern world, often created by corporate out‐ tionist rhetoric, whereby the authors offer a com‐ sourcing of labor procurement to subsidiaries like parison between the language used by antebellum the engineering frm Kellog, Brown and Root. Con‐ slaveholders to evade moral questions and the tinuing analysis of practice, Kerry Ward looks at use of justifications of free trade and paternalism the specific roles of maritime traders within both used by modern proponents of sex trafficking. The past and present slaveries. Using the Trafficking final chapter, from Stewart and Monti Narayan in Persons Report (2012), Ward reads case studies Darta, offers a reading of the events of Charlottes‐ regarding the shipping of slaves in the modern ville in the summer of 2017 through exploring the world alongside the trafficking of slaves like importance of deconstructing neo-Confederate Solomon Northrup during the antebellum era. Like the spiriting that Donoghue discusses, Ward 2 H-Net Reviews memory as a means to decompose global slaver‐ ies. The collection presents both supporters and detractors of the idea that current anti-slavery discussions can be informed by historical aboli‐ tionist movements. Generally, the volume lacks at‐ tention to nationalism within either historical or contemporary settings. This wanting investigation may prove detrimental to the lasting power of the activist edition, especially as the burdens of grow‐ ing populism and ethnic nationalism may impede the many attempts to grow transnational efforts against slaving in the modern world. Despite that open analytical space, the book is an important contribution to historical activist literature on dis‐ cussions of slaving in the modern world and should be read by both current activists and scholars of historical slavery. If there is additional discussion of this review, you may access it through the network, at https://networks.h-net.org/h-empire Citation: Andrew J. Kettler. Review of Swanson, Elizabeth; Stewart, James Brewer, eds. Human Bondage and Abolition: New Histories of Past and Present Slaveries. H-Empire, H-Net Reviews. January, 2019. URL: https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=53145 This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. 3.