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''The Slave Community: Plantation Life in the Antebellum South'' is a book written by American historian John W. Blassingame. Published in 1972, it is one of the first historical studies of slavery in the United States to be presented from the perspective of the enslaved. ''The Slave Community'' contradicted those historians who had interpreted history to suggest that African American slaves were docile and submissive "Sambos" who enjoyed the benefits of a paternalistic master-slave relationship on southern plantations. Using psychology, Blassingame analyzes fugitive slave narratives published in the 19th century to conclude that an independent culture developed among the enslaved and that there were a variety of personality types exhibited by slaves. Although the importance of ''The Slave Community'' was recognized by scholars of American slavery, Blassingame's conclusions, methodology, and sources were heavily criticized. Historians criticized the use of slave narratives that were seen as unreliable and biased. They questioned Blassingame's decision to exclude the more than 2,000 interviews with former slaves conducted by the Works Progress Administration (WPA) in the 1930s. Historians argued that Blassingame's use of psychological theory proved unhelpful in his interpretation. Blassingame defended his conclusions at a 1976 meeting of the Association for the Study of Afro-American Life and History and in 1979 published a revised and enlarged edition of ''The Slave Community''. Despite criticisms, ''The Slave Community'' is a foundational text in the study of the life and culture of slaves in the antebellum South. == Historiographic background == Ulrich Bonnell Phillips wrote the first major historical study of the 20th century dealing with slavery. In ''American Negro Slavery'' (1918), Phillips refers to slaves as "negroes, who for the most part were by racial quality submissive rather than defiant, light-hearted instead of gloomy, amiable and ingratiating instead of sullen, and whose very defects invited paternalism rather than repression."〔Ulrich Bonnell Phillips, ''American Negro Slavery: A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Régime'' (New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1918), pp. 341–342, .〕 ''American Negro Slavery'' is infused with racial rhetoric and upholds perceptions about the inferiority of black people common in the southern United States at the time. Although African American academics such as W. E. B. Du Bois criticized Phillips's depiction of slaves,〔W. E. B. Du Bois, review of ''American Negro Slavery'', in ''American Political Science Review'' 12 (November 1918): pp. 722–726, reprinted in ''W. E. B. Du Bois: A Reader'', ed. David Levering Lewis (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1995), ISBN 0-8050-3264-9.〕 the book was considered the authoritative text on slavery in America until the 1950s.〔Al-Tony Gilmore, introduction to ''Revisiting Blassingame's ''The Slave Community'': The Scholars Respond'', ed. Al-Tony Gilmore (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1978), pp. x–xi, ISBN 0-8371-9879-8.〕 Phillips's interpretation of slavery was challenged by Kenneth M. Stampp in ''The Peculiar Institution: Slavery in the Ante-Bellum South'' (1956) and Stanley M. Elkins in ''Slavery: A Problem in American Institutional and Intellectual Life'' (1958). Stampp's study lacks the racist interpretation found in ''American Negro Slavery'' and approaches the issue from the position that there is no innate difference between blacks and whites. He questions the reality of plantation paternalism described by Phillips: "the reality of ante-bellum paternalism ... needs to be separated from its fanciful surroundings and critically analyzed."〔Kenneth M. Stampp, ''The Peculiar Institution: Slavery in the Ante-Bellum South'' (1956; New York: Vintage Books, 1989), p. 322, ISBN 0-679-72307-2.〕 Elkins also dismisses Phillips's claim that African American slaves were innately submissive "Sambos". He argues that slaves had instead been infantilized, or "made" into Sambos, by the brutal treatment received at the hands of slaveowners and overseers. Elkins compares the process to the infantilization of Jews in Nazi concentration camps.〔Stanley M. Elkins, ''Slavery: A Problem in American Institutional and Intellectual Life'' (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958), chap. 3, ISBN 0-226-20477-4.〕 Like Phillips, Stampp and Elkins relied on plantation records and the writings of slaveowners as their main primary sources. Stampp admits that "few ask what the slaves themselves thought of bondage."〔 Historians dismissed the written works of slaves such as the 19th century fugitive slave narratives as unreliable and biased because of their editing by abolitionists.〔The few exceptions include Charles S. Sydnor, ''Slavery in Mississippi'' (New York: D. Appleton-Century Co., 1933), ; and E. Franklin Frazier, ''The Negro Slave Family'' (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1930), .〕 Scholars also ignored the 2,300 interviews conducted with former slaves in the late 1930s by the WPA Federal Writers' Project. As historian George P. Rawick points out, more weight was often given to white sources: the "masters not only ruled the past in fact" but also "rule its written history."〔George P. Rawick, ''From Sunup to Sundown: The Making of the Black Community'' (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1972), p. xiv, ISBN 0-8371-6747-7.〕 The 1970s, however, witnessed the publication of revisionist studies that departed from the traditional historiography of slavery. Focusing on the perspective of the slave, new studies incorporated the slave narratives and WPA interviews: George Rawick's ''From Sunup to Sundown: The Making of the Black Community'' (1972), Eugene D. Genovese's ''Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made'' (1974), Peter H. Wood, ''Black Majority: Negroes in Colonial South Carolina from 1670 Through the Stono Rebellion'' (1974), Leslie Howard Owens's ''This Species of Property: Slave Life and Culture in the Old South'' (1976), Herbert G. Gutman's ''The Black Family in Slavery and Freedom, 1750–1925'' (1976), and Lawrence W. Levine's ''Black Culture and Black Consciousness: Afro-American Folk Thought from Slavery to Freedom'' (1977). One of the more controversial of these studies was John W. Blassingame's ''The Slave Community''. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「The Slave Community」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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