Person

David Brion Davis

Bylines

The Slave Trade and the Jews

Jews have long been feared as the power behind inexplicable evils. Responsibility for the African slave trade has recently been added to this list of crimes.

by David Brion Davis via New York Review of Books on December 22, 1994
The American Dilemma

The moral contradiction of a nation torn between allegiance to its highest ideals and awareness of the base realities of racial discrimination.

by David Brion Davis via New York Review of Books on July 16, 1992

Viewing 1–8 of 8

The Problem of Slavery

David Brion Davis’s philosophical history.

by Scott Spillman via The Point on July 23, 2014

Sliced and shifted John Trumbull painting of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

America’s Founding Fathers Had No Faith in Democracy

On the inherent contradictions behind the American revolutionary dream.

by Joseph Ellis via Literary Hub on October 28, 2025

The “Visscher Map of the New World” including North and South America, 1658.

The Impossibly Intertwined History of the Americas

A conversation with Greg Grandin about his groundbreaking new book "America, América: A New History of the New World."

by Greg Grandin, Daniel Steinmetz-Jenkins via The Nation on April 21, 2025

Shackles with a magnifying glass on the end.

How the Study of Slavery Has Shaped the Academy

Who decides how history gets written?

by Scott Spillman via The Chronicle of Higher Education on March 4, 2025

Engraving of freed slaves arriving at Union lines, New Bern, North Carolina, 1863.

The Emancipators’ Vision

Was abolition intended as a perpetuation of slavery by other means?

by Sean Wilentz via New York Review of Books on December 1, 2022

American Slavery and ‘the Relentless Unforeseen’

What 1619 has become to the history of American slavery, 1688 is to the history of American antislavery.

by Sean Wilentz via New York Review of Books on November 19, 2019

Political cartoon of Grover Cleveland's trade policy.

Can History Avoid Conspiracy?

Historians still lack a good way to define, discuss, and address historical actions that appear to be "conspiracies."

by Andy Seal via U.S. Intellectual History Blog on June 4, 2018

People gathered around the Arlington confederate monument

The History of the History of American Slavery

In an age when the White House is being asked if slavery was a good or bad thing, perhaps we should take a look at the history of the history of slavery.

by Gaines M. Foster, Matthew Wills via JSTOR Daily on November 30, 2017

brought to you by

© Bunk History