Reviews
"A meticulously researched biography of one of the oft-overlooked cul-de-sacs in American history . . . An excellent book about a subject of real importance."
--The Virginia Quarterly Review
"Burin's research is impressive. Slavery and the Peculiar Solution is an excellent book and an important contribution to the study of slavery and race in America."
--The North Carolina Historical Review
"Conveys the image of chattel slavery not as a monolithic structure controlling all masters and slaves everywhere but as a constantly changing entity throbbing with painful issues of personal and private rights in conflict with predominant opinions about social cohesion and custom. States and local governments passed differing laws regarding the freeing of slaves and the control of freedmen after manumission. The result is a refreshingly complex picture of American slavery."
--History: Reviews of New Books
"Burin's study looks at the ACS as a complex whole. He explores the motives underlying manumission, the complex negotiations involved in the manumission process (both private and institutional), the transatlantic implications of colonization for former slave-owners as well as the enslaved free blacks, emigrants, and returnees, and the conditions in Liberia for migrants. This framework combines social, political, legal, and transnational history to construct a nuanced and complex portrait of a difficult chapter in American, Southern, African, and African American history."
--Itinerario
"For anyone interested in understanding the operation of the ACS and the various responses to it, Burin's book should serve them well."
--The Journal of American History
"Slavery and the Peculiar Institution should be required reading for anyone interested in research on colonization, both for its impressive research and for the many exciting questions it raises."
--H-Net Book Review
Eric Burin's fine new study offers one of the most insightful treatments of colonization in years. His cogent and provocative book makes a substantial case for colonization's centrality to antebellum political and cultural debate.
--The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography
…full of nuggets of new insights…Every historian working on colonization will want to read and engage this provocative history of the experience of African colonization for the manumitted, the manumitters, and their proslavery critics.
--American Historical Review
Burin does not deny or shy away from the conflicting impulses driving the ACS project. …an important addition to the historiographical debates that continue to surround this paradoxical institution.
--Civil War History
…balanced, accesible, and thorough…Burin's in-depth archival research and use of sound local history offer an excellent model for how future scholars should approach the ACS.
--The Journal of African American History
Burin has engaged in exhaustive analysis of ACS records to create a comprehensive database regarding society manumissions and Liberian emigrants…should be required reading…for its impressive research and for the many exciting questions it raises.
--H-Net Reviews
Eric Burin has written a wonderful story of the American Colonization Society…
--Virginia Magazine of History and Biography
" Burin's ability to gie voice to eighteenth-century blacks is remarkable. His analysis of the transatlantic importance of life in Liberia is illuminating. Burin has secured a relevant place in the historiography of colonization."
--Southern Historians
" A refreshing addition to contentious historiography on the ACS."
--Journal of the Early Republic