L’Esclavage aux Amériques : différences et similitudes. Une brève historiographie vue des Etats-Unis, 1947-1972

In the early twentieth century, and especially after World War II, historical studies on slavery came to a turning point. That was indeed the time when the first comparative studies of slavery in the New World were published. Major American historians decided to study the various slave regimes that characterized the history of the Americas in order to have a better understanding of their functioning and of the process of abolition, which was very different from one country, or colony, of the New World, to the other. In spite of their differences, and although some of these theories are now obsolete, the great value of these historical studies is that they revitalized the historiography of slavery and opened up new fields of research in the United States. Rather than being an overview of the whole historiography of the comparative history of slavery in the Americas, this article presents the first American historians who introduced and used the comparative method, introducing their theses and arguments while trying to contextualize their works and linking them with the rise of the Civil Rights Movement