The World That Fear Made
Slave Revolts and Conspiracy Scares in Early America (Early American Studies)
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The World That Fear Made
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Narrated by:
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Jonathan Salkoff
About this listen
From the Stono Rebellion in 1739 to the Haitian Revolution of 1791 to Nat Turner's Rebellion in 1831, slave insurrections have been understood as emblematic rejections of enslavement, the most powerful and, perhaps, the only way for slaves to successfully challenge the brutal system they endured. In The World That Fear Made, Jason T. Sharples orients the mirror to those in power who were preoccupied with their exposure to insurrection. Because enslavers in British North America and the Caribbean methodically terrorized slaves and anticipated just vengeance, colonial officials consolidated their regime around the dread of rebellion.
Mining archival records, Sharples shows how colonists from New York to Barbados tortured slaves to solicit confessions of baroque plots that were strikingly consistent across places and periods. Informants claimed that conspirators took direction from foreign agents; timed alleged rebellions for a holiday such as Easter; planned to set fires that would make it easier to ambush White people in the confusion; and coordinated the uprising with European or Native American invasion forces. Yet, as Sharples demonstrates, these scripted accounts rarely resembled what enslaved rebels actually did when they took up arms. Ultimately, he argues, conspiracy scares locked colonists and slaves into a cycle of terror that bound American society together through shared racial fear.
The book is published by University of Pennsylvania Press. The audiobook is published by University Press Audiobooks.
"Masterful.... That this book makes extremely significant contributions to scholarship understates the case." (Early American Literature)
"Thought-provoking, original, and engaging." (Justin Roberts, Dalhousie University)
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This factual presentation is lasting
- By marwalk on 04-10-20
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The Counter-Revolution of 1776
- Slave Resistance and the Origins of the United States of America
- By: Gerald Horne
- Narrated by: Larry Herron
- Length: 12 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 270
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 231
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Story5 out of 5 stars 227
The successful 1776 revolt against British rule in North America has been hailed almost universally as a great step forward for humanity. But the Africans then living in the colonies overwhelmingly sided with the British. In this trailblazing book, Gerald Horne shows that in the prelude to 1776, the abolition of slavery seemed all but inevitable in London, delighting Africans as much as it outraged slaveholders, and sparking the colonial revolt.
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5 out of 5 stars
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A revelation, a paradigm shift and a new view
- By Diana Black Kennedy on 03-28-18
By: Gerald Horne
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John Brown, Abolitionist
- The Man Who Killed Slavery, Sparked the Civil War, and Seeded Civil Rights
- By: David S. Reynolds
- Narrated by: P.J. Ochlan
- Length: 25 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 180
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 152
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Story5 out of 5 stars 151
Few historical figures are as intriguing as John Brown, the controversial Abolitionist who used terrorist tactics against slavery and single-handedly changed the course of American history. This brilliant biography of Brown (1800-1859) by the prize-winning critic and cultural biographer David S. Reynolds brings to life the Puritan warrior who gripped slavery by the throat and triggered the Civil War. When does principled resistance become anarchic brutality? How can a murderer be viewed as a heroic freedom fighter? The case of John Brown opens windows on these timely issues.
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5 out of 5 stars
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The story of the man who saved America from itself
- By Marc on 09-29-20
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Force and Freedom
- Black Abolitionists and the Politics of Violence
- By: Kellie Carter Jackson
- Narrated by: Machelle Williams
- Length: 7 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 50
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 46
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Story5 out of 5 stars 46
From its origins in the 1750s, the White-led American abolitionist movement adhered to principles of "moral suasion" and nonviolent resistance as both religious tenet and political strategy. Through tactical violence, argues Carter Jackson, Black abolitionist leaders accomplished what White nonviolent abolitionists could not: creating the conditions that necessitated the Civil War.
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5 out of 5 stars
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My ancestors were active in their freedom
- By Amazon Customer on 09-24-24
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A New World Begins
- The History of the French Revolution
- By: Jeremy D. Popkin
- Narrated by: Pete Cross, Jeremy D. Popkin
- Length: 21 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 302
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 258
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 257
The principles of the French Revolution remain the only possible basis for a just society - even if, after more than 200 years, they are more contested than ever before. In A New World Begins, Jeremy D. Popkin offers a riveting account of the revolution that puts the listener in the thick of the debates and the violence that led to the overthrow of the monarchy and the establishment of a new society.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Narration
- By Kindle Customer on 04-26-22
By: Jeremy D. Popkin
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Scars of Independence
- America's Violent Birth
- By: Holger Hoock
- Narrated by: Scott Brick
- Length: 14 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 134
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 114
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 113
The American Revolution is often portrayed as an orderly, restrained rebellion, with brave patriots defending their noble ideals against an oppressive empire. It's a stirring narrative, and one the founders did their best to encourage after the war. But as historian Holger Hoock shows in this deeply researched and elegantly written account of America’s founding, the Revolution was not only a high-minded battle over principles, but also a profoundly violent civil war—one that shaped the nation, and the British Empire, in ways we have only begun to understand.
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1 out of 5 stars
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very biased.
- By Andy T on 07-20-17
By: Holger Hoock
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Inhuman Bondage
- The Rise and Fall of Slavery in the New World
- By: David Brion Davis
- Narrated by: Raymond Todd
- Length: 16 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 306
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 215
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 218
In Inhuman Bondage, David Brion Davis sums up a lifetime of insight. He looks at slavery in the American South; the rise of the Cotton Kingdom; the daily life of slaves; the destructive internal long-distance slave trade; the sexual exploitation of slaves; the emergence of an African-American culture; and much more. A definitive history by a writer deeply immersed in the subject, Inhuman Bondage links together the profits of slavery, the pain of the enslaved, and the legacy of racism.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Very Useful Contribution
- By Biggar Thomas on 06-14-08
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American Uprising
- The Untold Story of America's Largest Slave Revolt
- By: Daniel Rasmussen
- Narrated by: David Drummond
- Length: 5 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 131
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 115
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 113
In January 1811, five hundred slaves dressed in military uniforms and armed with guns, cane knives, and axes rose up from the plantations around New Orleans and set out to conquer the city. Ethnically diverse, politically astute, and highly organized, this self-made army challenged not only the economic system of plantation agriculture but also American expansion. Their march represented the largest act of armed resistance against slavery in the history of the United States.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Nice try, but ...
- By Steve on 07-26-12
By: Daniel Rasmussen
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The War Before the War
- Fugitive Slaves and the Struggle for America's Soul from the Revolution to the Civil War
- By: Andrew Delbanco
- Narrated by: Ari Fliakos
- Length: 13 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 201
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 177
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Story5 out of 5 stars 177
For decades after its founding, America was really two nations—one slave, one free. There were many reasons why this composite nation ultimately broke apart, but the fact that enslaved black people repeatedly risked their lives to flee their masters in the South in search of freedom in the North proved that the "united" states was actually a lie. Fugitive slaves exposed the contradiction between the myth that slavery was a benign institution and the reality that a nation based on the principle of human equality was in fact a prison-house in which millions of Americans had no rights.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Great promise greater disappointment
- By Amazon Customer on 12-09-18
By: Andrew Delbanco
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Black Spartacus
- The Epic Life of Toussaint Louverture
- By: Sudhir Hazareesingh
- Narrated by: Ben Arogundade
- Length: 17 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 58
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 39
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 39
Among the defining figures of the Age of Revolution, Toussaint Louverture is the most enigmatic. Though the Haitian revolutionary’s image has multiplied across the globe—appearing on banknotes and in bronze, on T-shirts and in film—the only definitive portrait executed in his lifetime has been lost. Well versed in the work of everyone from Machiavelli to Rousseau, he was nonetheless dismissed by Thomas Jefferson as a “cannibal.” A Caribbean acolyte of the European Enlightenment, Toussaint nurtured a class of black Catholic clergymen who became one of the pillars of his rule.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Liberator of Haiti and a lamp to the world
- By Mike on 11-08-20
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Toussaint Louverture
- A Revolutionary Life
- By: Philippe Girard
- Narrated by: Paul Woodson
- Length: 10 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 135
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 121
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 119
Philippe Girard shows how Toussaint Louverture transformed himself from lowly freedman into revolutionary hero as the mastermind of the bloody slave revolt of 1791. By 1801, Louverture was governor of the colony where he had once been a slave. But his lifelong quest to be accepted as a member of the colonial elite ended in despair: he spent the last year of his life in a French prison cell. His example nevertheless inspired anticolonial and Black nationalist movements well into the 20th century.
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5 out of 5 stars
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very powerful story
- By jim on 01-06-17
By: Philippe Girard
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The Barbarous Years
- The Peopling of British North America: The Conflict of Civilizations, 1600-1675
- By: Bernard Bailyn
- Narrated by: Henry Strozier
- Length: 26 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 122
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 104
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Story4 out of 5 stars 105
Bernard Bailyn gives us a compelling account of the first great transit of people from Britain, Europe, and Africa to British North America, their involvements with each other, and their struggles with the indigenous peoples of the eastern seaboard.
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5 out of 5 stars
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A feast for genealogy/history buffs
- By judithh on 07-21-16
By: Bernard Bailyn
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God, War, and Providence
- The Epic Struggle of Roger Williams and the Narragansett Indians against the Puritans of New England
- By: James A. Warren
- Narrated by: Bob Souer
- Length: 7 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 79
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 66
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 67
A devout Puritan minister in 17th-century New England, Roger Williams was also a social critic, diplomat, theologian, and politician who fervently believed in tolerance. Banished from Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1635, Williams purchased land from the Narragansett Indians and laid the foundations for the colony of Rhode Island as a place where Indian and English cultures could flourish side by side, in peace. James A. Warren tells the remarkable and little-known story of the alliance between Roger Williams's Rhode Island and the Narragansett Indians, and how they joined forces to retain their autonomy and their distinctive ways of life against Puritan encroachment.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Best Written Book on the Subject
- By Jeffropicc on 01-02-21
By: James A. Warren
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Crimes and Cover-ups in American Politics
- 1776-1963
- By: Donald Jeffries, Ron Paul - foreword
- Narrated by: Lars Mikaelson
- Length: 13 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 175
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 151
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 152
Jeffries spares no one and nothing in this explosive new book. The atrocities of Union troops during the Civil War, and Allied troops during World War II, are documented in great detail. The Nuremberg Trials are presented as the antithesis of justice. In the follow-up to his previous, bestselling book Hidden History: An Exposé of Modern Crimes, Conspiracies, and Cover-Ups in American Politics, Jeffries demonstrates that crimes, corruption, and conspiracies didn't start with the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
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1 out of 5 stars
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Southern apologetic nonesense
- By Amazon Customer on 07-26-20
By: Donald Jeffries, and others
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Confederate Reckoning
- Power and Politics in the Civil War South
- By: Stephanie McCurry
- Narrated by: Teri Schnaubelt
- Length: 16 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 47
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 41
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 41
The story of the Confederate States of America, the proslavery, antidemocratic nation created by white Southern slaveholders to protect their property, has been told many times in heroic and martial narratives. Now, however, Stephanie McCurry tells a very different tale of the Confederate experience. Confederate Reckoning is the startling story of this epic political battle in which women and slaves helped to decide the fate of the Confederacy and the outcome of the Civil War.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Good view of the confederate inner workings.
- By Amazonian on 08-10-22
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They Can Live in the Desert but Nowhere Else
- A History of the Armenian Genocide
- By: Ronald Grigor Suny
- Narrated by: Eric Jason Martin
- Length: 15 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 137
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 120
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 120
Starting in early 1915, the Ottoman Turks began deporting and killing hundreds of thousands of Armenians in the first major genocide of the 20th century. By the end of the First World War, the number of Armenians in what would become Turkey had been reduced by 90 percent - more than 1,000,000 people. A century later, the Armenian genocide remains controversial but relatively unknown, overshadowed by later slaughters and the chasm separating Turkish and Armenian versions of events.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Great book, unbiased view finally
- By Raffy Afarian on 10-30-15