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Eugene Genovese

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description Eugene Genovese Overview

Eugene Genovese was an American historian of slavery and the antebellum South. His Marxist-informed scholarship examined the economic structure of slave society, the relationship between enslaved people and slaveholders, and the religious and cultural worlds created under slavery. Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made, published in 1974, became a major study of American slavery and received the Bancroft Prize for history.

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What is Roll, Jordan, Roll by Eugene Genovese about?

Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made, published in 1974, examines the social and cultural world created by enslaved people in the antebellum South. Genovese also analyzes slaveholders, paternalism, religion, labor, and resistance.

How did Marxism influence Eugene Genovese's history of slavery?

Genovese used Marxist concepts to examine class, labor, property, and the economic structure of slave society. His approach did not reduce slavery to economics alone, because Roll, Jordan, Roll also discusses religion and cultural life.

What does Eugene Genovese mean by paternalism in the antebellum South?

Paternalism describes the slaveholders' claimed idea that masters had obligations toward enslaved people, even though the system remained coercive and exploitative. Genovese used the concept to analyze the relationship between enslaved people and slaveholders in Roll, Jordan, Roll.

Which period did Eugene Genovese study most closely?

Genovese focused especially on slavery and the antebellum South before the American Civil War. His best-known book, Roll, Jordan, Roll, was published in 1974 and centers on the world of enslaved people.

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