A virtual book talk with Laura Sandy of the University of Liverpool from July 28, 2020. This presentation was co-sponsored by Mount Vernon's Fred W. Smith National Library for the Study of George Washington and the Robert H. Smith International Center for Jefferson Studies at Monticello. Recording available.
About the Book:
Overseers were central figures on early American plantations. Yet, despite a wealth of research on the institution of slavery and enslaved communities, historians have directed less attention to the middle men and women who managed enslaved laborers and the plantation enterprise—often using violence and intimidation—on a daily basis.
Laura Sandy’s new book, The Overseers of Early American Slavery: Supervisors, Enslaved Labourers, and The Plantation Enterprise explores the lives and impact of overseers in unprecedented detail. Based on research undertaken at the Fred W. Smith National Library for the Study of George Washington at Mount Vernon and the Robert H. Smith International Center for Jefferson Studies at Monticello, Sandy’s work illuminates the complex power struggles and the intersection of class, race, and slavery in early American society.
About the Author:
Laura Sandy is the current University of Liverpool co-director of the Centre for the Study of International Slavery. She is a historian of slavery, North America, and the Atlantic World. She teaches undergraduate modules on colonial America, American slavery, and Civil Rights and early American comparative slaveries as part of the MA in International Slavery Studies. She joined the University of Liverpool in October 2015 having previously held full-time posts at Oxford Brookes University and Keele University.
Laura’s ESRC funded PhD and Post-Doctoral awards supported research on American slavery and led to the publication of works, which review the lives of overseers (free and enslaved) and their wives on colonial slave plantations in Virginia and South Carolina. Her first book is entitled The Overseers of Early American Slavery: Supervisors, Enslaved Labourers, and the Plantation Enterprise. She is also the editor of a collection of essays, "The Civil War and Slavery Reconsidered: Negotiating the Peripheries.” Her research has involved archival research in every former slave state in the United States looking at slavery, plantation management, resistance, and free people of color, voluntary enslavement, the theft of slaves, and the law. Her most recent work investigates the illegal trafficking of slaves in North America in the 18th and 19th centuries. Laura has advised on museum exhibitions and given talks on her research to historical societies and institutions in the UK, Europe, and the US.
The Overseers of Early American Slavery with Dr. Laura Sandy
