Black Yankees: The Development of an Afro-American Subculture in Eighteenth-Century New England Review

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(More customer reviews)William Dillon Piersen's Black Yankees covers a topic given short shrift in most history curricula -- the development of African-American culture in 18th century New England. The text does a good job of describing the differences between the slavery's function in New England's economy and the way the institution functioned in the plantation zone, and is at its strongest when talking about the parallel political and legal system slaves established for themselves, electing their own "governors" and "kings," often with white support.
The book also does a thorough job of looking at Afro-Yankee religious practices, though this section is marred by unnecessary snarkiness about white Yankee religion.
Unfortunately the book fails to more than lightly touch on the abolition of slavery and how that affected 18th century blacks. While Pierson richly supplements his text with charts and tables showing changes in black population in New England by colony and region within the colonies (later states), he never tells us how the percentages of free blacks changed, though that data should have been readily available to him. We get tantalizing anecdotes about free blacks and some individual emancipation stories, but no effort at looking at the big picture.
The book's biggest weakness though is its near total unconcern with the 800 pound gorilla in the room -- I mean THE central event of 18th century New England History, the American Revolution. Black participation in this war, how and why New England black attitudes about the war differed from blacks in other parts of America, and how the war altered black-white relations and the black community's view of itself are vital to a full understanding of 18th century Black New England life, but again we get only a few anecdotes. Piersen cannot simply claim that he was interested in COLONIAL black life and that the revolution was outside the scope of his study, because his narrative does stretch forward to the 1790s, and even touches on the first half of the 19th century in a few spots.
This is a useful and informative book, but it is not all it could or should have been. I can recommend it for serious students of New England history or African-American history, but look forward to finding a more thorough text that will supersede it.

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